Vanessence: Tech Tuesday

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Tech Tuesday

I got this email the other day, from Microsoft.

When account upgrades begin at the end of June, you will no longer be able to receive email sent to your Out‍look‍.‍com account in Windows Live Mail 2012.

This makes me sad. And annoyed. I’ve been using Windows Live Mail (formerly Outlook Express) for 20 years now. It’s a great program. And it baffles me that Microsoft won’t upgrade it. Instead, it’s going to get rid of it*. For something that doesn’t work as well, I might add. I’ve tried the mail app in Windows 10 and find it to be slow and rather clunky. I should add, on another computer, because there ain’t no way Win10 is getting installed on my desktop computer.

*I should note, Microsoft says they’re not going to totally eliminate the program … yet, just that your Outlook and Hotmail accounts won’t work with it anymore. Guess how long it’ll take Gmail to decide not to work with Windows Live Mail anymore either?

This is what I don’t understand. You come up with a great product, people love it, they use it regularly, for years, and then you get rid of said product for something that people don’t like nearly as much and that doesn’t work nearly as well. Nobody does three cheers for downgrading. I’m just sayin’.

I have a ton of email accounts, Hotmail, Outlook, Gmail, even some Yahoo. Windows Live Mail was awesome in that I could monitor all my email (except Yahoo) from a single central location. Now I won’t be able to do that anymore.

I’ve tried Thunderbird, and while it’s great with Gmail, I don’t want to use it with my Outlook accounts as it downloads everything off the server onto my computer, and I don’t want that. I’ve tried the desktop version of Outlook for my Outlook and Hotmail accounts, but it doesn’t allow me to see all my email from all my accounts in a single pane. So, I can’t simply check all unread mail, I have to open each account individually. That’s a pain. Most other desktop email clients I looked at just didn’t offer what I need and seem to be geared toward a business application.

So far I’m looking at Mailbird. It has a lot of really nice features. I really like all the apps they connect you with – Facebook, Twitter, Wunderlist, ToDoIst, Google Calendar, the list goes on and on. Being the app-happy fiend that I am, that sits pretty nice with me, actually. And I suppose I don’t mind paying for an email service that offers so much, although Mailbird is free when you have 3 or fewer email accounts to handle. They work with Outlook, Hotmail, Gmail, even Yahoo. And probably some others I’m not aware of. However, I’m finding the font in the sidebar to be uncomfortably small with no way to adjust it, and no way to distinguish the different email accounts when you have several. Like, you can’t change the color or avatar image or anything like that. For now though, that’s likely the one I’ll end up with simply for all that it offers. I’ll live with the too-small font to have all my email in a single location.

Microsoft, I have to tell you, I’ve been a pretty loyal user since I first heard about you more than 20-25 years ago. But, as of this year, you are BIG TIME on my poopy list. And I’m aboutthisclose to publically calling you a naughty name.

If you’ve been using Windows Live Mail, what alternatives are you looking at to replace it?