From the Do Microsoft Have Any Idea What They’re Doing? Dept comes another story about Microsoft products not quite gelling with reality. ZDNet Australia last week interviewed Microsoft Office product manager Dan Leach who said that Microsoft planned to halt development of Outlook Express, the email client that comes bundled with the browser Internet Explorer. Basically Microsoft seemed to hope everybody would upgrade to the Outlook collossus. Fast forward two days, and scratch all that.
“I sat down with the Windows team today,” ZDNet quoted Leach as saying, ”and they tell me my comments were inaccurate. Outlook Express was in sustain engineering, but customers asked for continued improvement, and we are doing that. Microsoft will continue its innovation around the email experience in Windows.”
Leach was either on the beach too long, or customers were upset, or Bill intervened. Whatever, I’m overjoyed I’m still going to have ‘the email experience in Windows’, whatever that is. Still, I’d rather go for Courier, Pegasus, or even the email client in Opera. None are perfect, but they’re sturdy.