fred avolio's musings

“Refusing to join the modern world [in not] implementing Microsoft Outlook”

I will have more to say in another blog entry. But, for now I wanted to share an e-mail I received and my comment.

Mr. Avolio,

I recently read an article you co-wrote that was published in Information Security Magazine. I hope you can answer a quick question for me…

I work for a local community college in Canada and our IT department is refusing to join the modern world by implementing Microsoft Outlook. Currently all users are forced to use the mail feature of Netscape Communicator 4.79. We are using the IMAP protocol.

We are told that Outlook is less ‘safe’ and not as ‘secure’ as Netscape when it comes to preventing the spread of viruses throughout the system.

Does this make any sense?

This was my reply:

It makes complete sense and they are 100% correct. You should praise whoever had the guts to say no to Outlook as an email client.

I have to use Outlook in a new day job. I’ll talk about what I hate about it. Some has to do with basic e-mail functionality. Others have to do with security. More anon.