outlook = asswipe

Email sig looks perfect in html viewers, word, etc. It even looks fine in the Outlook sig preview and edit dialogues. When I send an email the whole thing goes haywire. Outlook is dog shit.

you see this is the sort of old ilx thread i dig

Email signatures considered harmful.

also outlook is poo

HTML email sigs are hideous and wrong and shouldnt be allowed. Especially ANIMATED ones, god please make them stop. THEY LOOK LIKE SHITE IN ANYTHING BUT OUTLOOK GUIZE.

Once, I "lost" an important attachment from a colleague because Entourage displays all the stupid email "sig" images as attachments and the dude had about 4-5 signature, background, and whatnot images, putting his "important" attachment beyond the immediately viewable list. I really wanted to visit his cube with my "learn to use a computer" baseball bat.

I don't talk to recruiters with weird fonts in their sigs.

comic sans ftw

could someone explain to me why outlook is still used over google apps? are there benefits from an IT perspective?

specifically for businesses? it just seems so much cheaper and more simple to administrate.

It's the Exchange server, they only have to support one kind of client. At least, this was the explanation we got when everyone was forced to switch over to Exchange/Outlook/Entourage. Also, jerks can share their calendars w/ each other.

But just jerks.

but with gmail you wouldn't even need a stupid exchange server. right?

Probably? I know the Exchange server does work w/ other clients. You could probably configure Gmail to work with it. I tried and tried to get the IT dudes to let me set up pine to interact with Exchange, and they wouldn't go for it. I think it comes down to IT being lazy and wanting to do as little as possible.

One big issue is that of secrecy and security. While you might not have any problem trusting Google, folks who like to see procedures and policies and have guarantees get just a blank wall from GOOG.

Kind of PO'd at my IT dept this morning 'cause my Entourage has just stopped connecting.

^^^^happens to me occasionally too. Usually it's because they made a change on the server side and forgot to tell me (I'm one of the few Mac users in the department).

i could understand people being weirded out by google ads on their work email, but do you think there is a way to offer something more secure instead of being totally free?

im sorry but i wonder this every time i attempt to do a search on outlook and it takes 10 minutes

In other words, if you can afford to care about secrecy and security, go yr groupwhore in-house. If not, go-go-Google-Apps. (xps)

The point about using Google Apps is that Google isn't going to offer any kind of guarantees, even if you pay them. And even if they did, yr legal dept. -- if you have one -- may have other thoughts. For instance, is GOOG going to ensure that you are SOX compliant? Fuck no.

It might also be the case that Google would make you TOO compliant. My company expires mail periodically. You don't want that paper trail growing too long, y'know?

so it's mostly compliance that is stopping people?

"Fear".

don't use Gmail but had a look at it a while back but doesn't it use a LOT of Flash/Javascript/ActiveX?

I mean yeah Google is mad coooool and all that but there are plenty of OLD P3's with just ram enough to run XP (barely) still in daily use all over the worl I can only imagine would *choke* on such a web app but be fine with an actual installed program no?

shit there are probably a *thousand* reasons why not (can google apps send an editable excel spreadsheet as a message body even?)

this seems like an incredibly naive question somehow :/

fandango, Gmail allows IMAP and POP access for their users. Over SSL too. So it works just like any normal mail account.

Also, in all fairness, there are plenty of companies that are just too big for Gmail.

Also, Gmail is all DHTML. No flash, no ActiveX.

but how well does it integrate with Office generally? Isn't that the kicker?

I mean people cutting and pasting partial bits of formatted documents, tables etc and being able to actually copy those back into whatever you might need them for on-the-go?

xpost - ah cool.

Office 2007 though... ugh!

I think it comes down to IT being lazy and wanting to do as little as possible.

that's a given but probably not the reason. retraining employees and upgrading software/servers factors in.

also go restart your computer 3 times or stfu.

I haven't used Outlook with Gmail, but I would presume that it's no different than when used with Exchange. All that fancy OLE copypasta is embedded as MIME objects, with no assistance needed from the server. So as long as you can use Outlook with Gmail, you won't really know the difference, at least in terms of pure mail.

We were also told we'd get less spam, too. Hahaha that was just a lie. xp

so you could open an email in Gmail and get Word context menus up as long as it's embedded as MIME?

I'm just about dubious enough I may have to try it for myself *^_^*

Not in the web interface, but if it's a message you're picking up in outlook, probably. Outlook just embeds it as an attachment anyway.

no business of any size is going to have a mail server that isn't hosted by them, that they can't back up, that they can't snoop into, etc.

so I'd have to forward the Gmail to Outlook now? Am I being dense here or would that defeat the purpose a bit..?

fandango, you have to configure Outlook to use Gmail for that to work, but I'm pretty sure it will. (xp)

fandango, Outlook is just a mail client. An IMAP, POP, NNTP, and Exchange client, but it doesn't actually accept incoming mails. You point it at Gmail, not forward Gmail mail to it.

Outlook is not Exchange, and Exchange is not Outlook, although both work happier when you use the two together.

so we're really just talking about using Gmail as a free beer pop/smtp server for offsite storage then here?

POP/IMAP & SMTP. Also, groupware. That's the key feature of Google Apps.

wait is Gmail pop/smtp still free?? I might have to finally get round to changing my email address and using a proper email program (for home and work) then!

Every Gmail account which is inactive for six months is labeled dormant and three months later (a total of nine months), may get deactivated by Gmail. All stored messages would be deleted if that were to happen.

:/

also, I wouldn't expect a business to budget on the *hope* that it remains free rather than simply owning their own domain surely?

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/editions.html

no business of any size is going to have a mail server that isn't hosted by them, that they can't back up, that they can't snoop into, etc.

― akm, Wednesday, September 24, 2008 4:40 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^^

xpost - yes yes, ok.. was just about to say I've clearly not read up on this as much as I should be to be posting here!

no business of any size is going to have a mail server that isn't hosted by them, that they can't back up, that they can't snoop into, etc.

This isn't as true as you might think. I know of a few companies that do use Gmail (dunno about Google Apps). It's probably not a WISE decision for a firm of any size, but a bootstrapping sili valley startup is more likely to trust Google. They have less to lose, and the tech culture out here thinks that Google = all goodness and no evil.

although both work happier when you use the two together

christ's gonads. if that's working "happier", i'd hate to see the alternative.

Tons of IT companies are moving infrastructure into the cloud and google apps is just part of that -- we're thinking about moving some services onto Amazon EC2. We could never do Google Apps because we're under discovery for a lawsuit right now…

This is an excellent example of why a business miiiight not want to do groupware on Google Apps. $50/year does not buy you a whole helluva lot of support.

Focused Other

i mean, wtf