For a good laugh, read ZDNet

[Ixthusdan]

Check out this article at ZDNet. But what does it actually say? That linux has no email clients? Surely they are not that stupid. Alas, they are. Read the comments for more laughs.

[arctic]

I could understand that article, if it were published on april 1st, but december 1st? :huh:

[JonEberger]

i cannot believe that. in every aspect there are the equivalent applications in linux and better on the antivirus front. obviously if you're already using mozilla-thunderbird, it's already there. for outlook, there's evolution.

 

the virus issue is one that is not dealt with otherwise.

[tyme]

oh zdnet...what to say, what to say.

[Shadowchaser]

Ok this has to be some kind of prank right? Don't these people (zdnet) do any research????? Next thing they'll print is that MS doesn't suffer from Root Kit infections!

Edited December 3, 2005 by Shadowchaser

[tyme]

zdnet = tool

[Gul Dukat]

This can't be serious....

And who did the survey?

Edited December 3, 2005 by Gul Dukat

[scarecrow]

This can't be serious....

And who did the survey? 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

A guru lady named Karen Gomm. She even knows where her puter's reset button is.

[aioshin]

maybe she's just joking, she just want us to laugh sometimes

:P

[Ixthusdan]

I'm afraid it's not a joke. I get the ZDNet newsletter and have read absolutely terrible articles concerning linux. They do not know what they are talking about and apparently assign a staff person to be a self proclaimed "expert" in order to publish a column. Their surveys are their own and they never tell what they actually asked the respondents. It's an example of bad polling and bad journalism.

[Gowator]

The question is mainly if she is correct?

The main problem with the article is she either doesn't know what eMail is or is pretending not to.

 

She talks about eMail while meaning proprierty groupware but I would guess she is not alone in this in the Microsoft world....

 

Many large enterprises use Exchange and most of those that do not use Notes or similar. However how do they use it might be a different question.

 

Exchange does the public address book scheduling thing. My personal experience (in a large corp) is it get used one or twice, usually by the IT dept inviting you to a Outlook trainign course ... then you try and use it but most upper management don't do their own scheduling are just don't want to use it themselves so its use falls away to nothing.

 

I think its like defining a car is only a real car if it has 4WD. Now some people actually *need* 4WD and one or two use it when it snows... but most just use the SUV to take the kids to school.

 

My guess is 90% of exchange users use it for eMail only...

 

However like most M$ parasiteware getting rid of it is not so simple so once its installed and the public address book is populated etc. companies are largely stuck with it.

Her article I would guess is of large (>1000 employees) companies with MS monkeys doing the IT.

 

In these cases then lack of Exchange capability really is stopping adoption of linux!

[lavaeolus]

My personal experience with outlook-use in companies was exactly what gowator said: it was mostly used for email, the funny thing was, although there was a public adress book most of the guys had a personal too (containing mostly adresses that where already in the public) and yes they had outlook-courses

[Ixthusdan]

For those of you who may not know, Outlook's so called robust ability is only accomplished through a Microsoft Exchange server. It is only a personal email/calender program otherwise. So the ZDNet poll businesses must also be using Excange server in order to have this complete misunderstanding. If you read the comments, most haven't a clue. The reason Outlook is not used is because many IT guys/gals don't want to risk their enterprise with Exchange. Exchange is probably the most virus targeted server product on the market.

[Shadowchaser]

I Think the Gowator should write the next article concerning linux email clients and groupware. It's obvious that he has a deeper knowledge of understanding on Linux versus Exchange (or whatever) than the shmuck who wrote the zdnet article!

 

Can i get an Amen?

Edited December 4, 2005 by Shadowchaser

[Gowator]

I Think the Gowator should write the next article concerning linux email clients and groupware. It's obvious that he has a deeper knowledge of understanding on  Linux versus Exchange (or whatever) than the shmuck who wrote the zdnet article! 

 

Can i get an Amen?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Its not difficult but unfortunately I beleive most ZDNet readers will identify with her experiences.

 

Its not like linux lacks either eMail clients or groupware but only Novell sponsored Evolution presently exchanges info with Exchange and OpenExchange. More to the point like 90% of MS software advances in the last 10 yrs it does nothing useful and replaces what was useful software.

 

Lots of little utilities used to exist in wondows which were quite cool, from stacker and mem managers etc. to simple label printers now Word does a mail merge noone ever seems to use... Excel does fourier transforms etc. etc.

 

Meantime we can't find any nice little utilites anymore because MS has 'integrated them' while overcomplicating them ... but who the heck wants the eMail client doing the scheduling anyway?

 

Everytime I create a appointment it asks for lots of details I don't want, like who's office and who is invited and I just put me else it goes off doing its own thing inviting people and then they start asking why I didn't attend the meeting that the software rescheduled into my vacation time ... Why diudn't I book down vacation time? Well i didn't know who else I had to invite from the address book!

 

The real article should be why do IT managers think that an eMail client should do scheduling and whatever else they plan to use Exchange for. After they send those first invitations to a course noone should need to attend (its an aMail client... how can it be so complex as to need a training course)

 

Maybe they should think about this as they drive home tonight on the highway in their SUV ?

I bet they planned weekends in the countryside when they bought the 15mpg SUV and equiped it with oversize tyres and a winch ... and right now they can't even sell it because it looks like a off-road version that might have been abused.

 

Well they are stuck with the SUV and we are stuck with a stupid eMail client to link to a server noone uses apart from the basic eMail that we could have had for free with a sendmail server!