Which Windows e-mail program is best?

In yesterday’s Washington Post, Rob Pegoraro has a review of several e-mail programs that left me scratching my head. Let me see if I can give you the short version. Here’s the intro:

One of the two most widely used programs in this category, Microsoft’s Outlook Express, has not had a meaningful update since 1999, save security fixes for its appalling history of vulnerabilities. The other is Microsoft’s bloated, corporate-centric Outlook, normally sold only with its Office suite for $150 and up. These are not exactly programs that inspire love.

OK, there’s the landscape. Now, he says, “ This dormant market is finally waking up.” The contenders are Eudora and Thunderbird. Here’s what he reports:

• “Trouble commences with a move from Outlook Express or Outlook.” Eudora mangles address books and settings. Thunderbird doesn’t copy any Outlook settings.
• “ Eudora is terrific with POP but slow and clumsy with IMAP; Thunderbird’s near-peerless IMAP performance contrasts with POP support that omits a few options handy when checking one account from two computers.”
• Thunderbird “can’t even check your spelling as you type.”
• Eudora “ routinely locks up briefly while processing messages and too often crashes outright. The software is confusing to learn … Eudora’s interface – vast amounts of blank space and toolbar icons that appear to have been drawn with crayons – looks ugly.”
• Both programs try to filter spam, but neither one nails more than half of it.
• Eudora excels in keeping track of messages, Thunderbird has a “slick message-finding system.”
• Neither program can compete with Outlook in one crucial way: their address books.

Bottom line: “Considering how Thunderbird has evolved so far, it looks like the e-mail program of the future. But until Thunderbird gains a real address book, I can’t blame users who conclude that Outlook, for all its defects, remains the e-mail program of the present.”

Eudora seems to be a complete straw man here. Why waste half the review on a program that’s ugly and routinely locks up? I would have liked to see a head-to-head comparison between Thunderbird and Outlook, but that wouldn’t have been fair. Outlook is a personal information manager; Thunderbird is a simple e-mail program. What does he mean that Outlook is “bloated”? Does it use too much memory? And as for its “corporate-centric” design, Rob seems to be stuck in 1998. I haven’t worked in a corporate office since 1993, and Outlook is an absolutely indispensable part of my working life. The same is true for my wife, who left corporate life the same time I did and does just about everything in Outlook.

Don’t get me wrong. I like Thunderbird and agree that it’s a worthy alternative to Outlook Express. But I think a lot of the criticism of Outlook, as typified by its quick dismissal in this review, is a legacy of bugs and bad design decisions that plagued earlier editions. Most of the big problems were solved with Outlook 2002 (Office XP). The changes in Outlook 2003 made this a phenomenal productivity suite that does a great job with calendars, contacts and e-mail. In my experience, the program is fast, easy to use, extraordinarily customizable, and rarely if ever crashes.

And Outlook “doesn’t inspire love”? I know a lot of people who don’t work for Microsoft (David Allen, Marc Orchant, Sue Mosher, and a few hundred others) who would disagree.

(Bonus tip for everyone having problems with Outlook 2003 and IMAP: Open the account settings dialog box for your IMAP server and click the More Settings button. On the Advanced tab, slide the Server Timeouts bar all the way to the left, so it’s set at 10 seconds. Previously, I had experienced the same hangs that other people reported,. No longer.)