Outlook Haters, anyone?

David Coursey writes an interesting bit about how the competitors to Microft Office (i.e. Star Office, Word Perfect, what not) need to get themselves an Outlook competitor, because that's the only (or main) reason standing in the way of folks switching from Microsoft. A couple of points:

• I can't believe that David feels that Outlook 2003 is so much better than the previous version (Outlook XP.) I am usually a Microsoft fan but in this case there are various really bad design choices which make Outlook 2003 a constant aggrevation for me to use. The Spam filtering is one thing that is new and good, but not meaningful to me because I am already using a very effective spam filtering app (Matador)

• Then again I am not an Outlook hater. I am amused when people I work with berate Outlook how awful and useless it is, and insist on using Eudora. The profoundly good thing about Outlook, which I am surprised no-one has competed with is the integration of email, calendar and addressbook.

Synergies are everywhere : I can use a single addressbook for both my email addresses and phone numbers. I can use email to deliver and process appointments and calendar updates. I can use the addressbook to point to someone's free-busy information. These are incredibly important integrations: the three functions (email, calendar and addressbook) belong together.