"Now, don't get me wrong: Outlook's a brilliant bit of software."

Squander, have you suddenly gone utterly batshit?

I love Outlook and Entourage. Entourage's spam filters beat Thunderbird's, Outlook Express is dead handy, and Outlook is thoroughly useful and reliable. I even use it as a basic text editor: most of the posts on this blog were composed in Outlook messages. Now I think of it, it's one of the few bits of software I've never had a serious problem with.

Excel, however, is not as good as Lotus 1-2-3.

Interestingly, Jerry Pournelle is having the same problem just now. I await with interest his comments when he finds out that a registry hack is thy only way around this....

btw I don't suppose the woman who wanted to stop using MS Word was allowed to make that choice herself... I am sure what she meant was "if that means my employers will stop forcing Word on me, than I'm all for it".

btw (2) if you're in IT you must surely know dozens of perfectly good alternative mail programs (well two or three anyway) so why the hell are you still using Outlook?

> I am sure what she meant was "if that means my employers will stop forcing Word on me, than I'm all for it".

Which would still have nothing whatsoever to do with the court case.


> why the hell are you still using Outlook?

I've tried alternative mail programs, and haven't liked them. I'm probably going to ditch Thunderbird soon, and Apple's Mail app is shite in a bag. Outlook and Entourage are class.

I should add, though, that Outlook's bloody awful with its default settings. I need to tweak it a bit to get it the way I like it.

Good post, Sq2.

My favourite Win XP gripe: A certain check-box ought to be renamed as "Always perform the selected action, ps, "always" meaning just this once then promptly forget it, and go through the same "What do you want to do?" procedure with every subsequent mixed-content CD-R that is inserted into the drive".