I got a popup saying “wanna try the new Outlook app”? So I did and the fucking thing immediately inserted ads that resembled email into my inbox. If this is the future I’ll install Thunderbird.
Thunderbird is great!
It’s basically gmail. It’s a web/email server that you give your creds over to . It has an offline mode that I guess makes it an app.
Yeah they read your shit.
For consumers, yeah they scan your shit to sell advertisements to you. For Business customers —that could get real illegal real quick.
MS has much better privacy for licensed customers. It’s well documented and in their MSA.
No sh*t.
But, TBF, email as a system doesn’t need ProtonMail too to be kinda private.
PGP, mixmasters, all those things born around the same time as me.
That’s if we lived in a world where “key party” weren’t perceived as related to sex.
No shit. There’s a reason they are killing the nice and simple Windows Mail app; it allows you to sync with your email without Microsoft servers between.
Also, the biggest issue for me is the UX. I use outlook for my work email and like to separate my work and personal life, so soon I just won’t have an app for my personal email on my PC.
If anyone knows of a similar windows mail app with good touch support and without such a traditional mouse designed UI, please share it.
Wino Mail has a pretty good UI similar to the Mail app. You can find it in the Store.
Thank you for actually reading my comment and suggesting something appropriate instead of whatever gets you the most karma (“use thunderbird/Linux!”).
I’ve been using Thunderbird since forever. It’s not perfect but I like it better than bloated and laggy Outlook.
But better for touch and simpler than windows mail?
I am only using Outlook for work email.
If by “better for touch” you mean a phone app: no, Thunderbird is for your computer. In Android I can recommend FairEmail.
No, I mean like windows mail app for windows. A large screen app that can easily used with only touch. Like I said in my first comment.
Failing to read my comments and just answering the questions you want to answer is not helpful.
Sorry I missed that. I don’t think you’ll ever be happy using Windows on a touch device though. Too much relies on the traditional UX pattern, especially third-party applications.
I thought Thunderbird was getting increasingly shitty and slower/clunky, until I realised it was actually my ISP’s mail server getting increasingly shit. This became immediately obvious the day that emails started taking 12-18 hours to land in my inbox. Reallllll handy for those time limited account reset emails.
Transferred my IMAP inbox to my own domain, everything is now awesome again.
I really liked the mail app, the outlook one sucks
As a guy who runs Windows 10 LTSC on one of the machine, yeah I agree it do suck ass
Not only it’s UI design doesn’t fit at all with overall Windows 10 UI design, it also runs significantly slower than the old Windows Mail app
And in the typical Microsoft fashion, they’ll shoved that garbage into everyone’s throat despite nobody ever asked for it
Fuck that
The new thunderbird UI looked neat and modern.
They’re still working out some kinks, but yes, the new UI of Thunderbird 115+ is pretty good.
Thunderbird has a new UI?
I’m on 115 and i dont notice anything different from how its always been… (This isnt some joke, or insult, or anything. I genuinely don’t notice anything different?)
If you update from a previous version then it configures itself to be similar to the old UI. If you do a clean install it looks very different.
fresh install on a fresh OS install.
Weird
Isn’t that more of a replacement for Outlook? It doesn’t look designed around touch like the windows mail app.
Outlook in Office (365) is the actual Outlook.
This is like the Lite Edition.
Huh? Okay, well I don’t want either of those. I want a light touch first mail app. If it is like any version of Outlook for PC, I’m not interested as it doesn’t meet what I originally asked for.
If you’re still using Windows 11, they’re still collecting your data. Sure, no need to give them more, but maybe that’s the push you need to move elsewhere. There are really good options.
I’m waiting for Microsoft to bring back the option to move the taskbar to the side of the screen before upgrading to windows 11 from 10.
I may switch to Linux if IT forces the update and I can’t stop it.
I don’t know any of the alternatives that have similar UI to the Windows Mail app
But it is possible to get back the old Windows Mail app by obtaining the dumped package file for the app (either by looking for it online or leeching it from the official Microsoft Store website using store.adguard.ru) and then install it using Powershell
At least that’s what I do with one of my systems running Windows 10 LTSC, since that version of Windows doesn’t came with Windows Mail and MS Store pre-installed
Thank you for actually reading my comment and suggesting something appropriate! I’ll have to figure out how to get the package file myself, thanks!
I’ve been paying for mailspring for a few years now, and I love it. It has touch and gesture support, is open source, and is available on Windows, MacOS, and Linux.
Its paid plan includes some nice features like email tracking - which you can’t really get from just a simple client and (needs a server to track who has opened an email and when) - and id lookup, for things like quickly seeing the LinkedIn profile of a sender not in your contacts list.
Definitely my favorite desktop client by a wide margin, and one I would recommend wholeheartedly.
Edit: Just to be clear, it’s available for free as well.
Is it a local-only client, or does it download email on their cloud servers first?
Local only.
Even if you pay for their subscription, when you get to a new computer you need to manually authenticate with each service. But, it remembers which accounts you have, so it’s faster than manually setting up each account from scratch. Basically “we know you have Gmail, xmail, ymail - tap each account to reauthenticate”
It’s a good way to have (part of) the convenience of a cloud service, while combining it with the security of local only clients.
Edit: all of this is optional, you can choose not to let their cloud service know of any of your accounts.
Thank you for actually reading my comment and suggesting something appropriate, though I’m not convinced by the UI images. I’ll have to test the touch support myself, but I’ll check it out.
While I don’t use it like that myself, the website touts “touch and gesture support”, so I’m assuming there’s something in there.
It is free, so give it a shot - maybe it’ll scratch your itch!
What especially galled me was as I was updating my laptop before flashing to Linux the new outlook will not work unless edge installed, I had just uninstalled that pile of garbage.
Ah well, at least pop_os works great 😃
As someone with an iCloud account, every time I try to use Outlook it randomly deletes emails from my iCloud account. I’ve posted this multiple times on Microsoft support site with others confirming and since it’s been more than year with no acknowledgment or fix I am convinced it’s a feature not a bug. YMMV.
You sure you did not use POP3?
Yes I went over all settings multiple times with Outlook support. It’s a bug/feature they are not interested in fixing.
Just stop using it with outlook then?
I wasn’t asking for your advise but was merely pointing out experience that others may not want to repeat. I don’t use Outlook at all.
Yeah, that update was the final push that moved me to Linux on my primary computer. I’ve used Linux for about 20 years on everything that wasn’t my gaming PC and between the advancements made by Valve and the increasing invasive nature of Windows put an end to my relationship with Microsoft.
Email is outdated. I hate that it’s required for anything, no one uses it for anything other than a high speed fax machine for boring business communique
Should we start running our business on tiktok?
No
Your alternative?
Anything designed within the last 20 year should do it
Can you be more specific?
Rarely open protocol.
Xitter…
Damn right, long live Google Wave!
Eww, Google products
I was joking, but I’m curious what product you think could replace email? It’s popular because it’s instant (as opposed to phone, fax, email), and most importantly because it’s decentralised. There is no one company in control, anyone can run a server on any software so long as it speaks the open standards.
I’m sure there is something that could replace it, but what’s your suggestion?
Everyone uses messengers now, it’s already been replaced
So you want your entire online identity to be owned and controlled by one of the big online corps?
Email have very much not been replaced. Messengers fit a specific niche. I personally send dozens of emails a day, and receive even more. These aren’t chat messages, but more elaborate emails that chat messages just don’t suit.
Why don’t you use FIDOnet while you’re at it?
Apples to oranges. Messengers replace text, which replaces telegram.
Emails are comparable to letters, and are still the best option for that format.
The email protocol actually isn’t instant, delivery delays up to 24 hours are with specification
You mean, other than being the most widespread method of account identification on the internet?
You need to have a method of uniquely identifying (and verifying) accounts and the other widespread method (phone numbers) is extremely privacy invasive because it’s much harde or practically impossible to change phone number for most people.
I feel the same about SMS auth. Considering many services block voip and Google Voice, it’s impossible to use the broad majority of web services without a cellphone.
This is why I don’t get excited when I hear some software that I already use and works fine gets an update. More often than not the update makes the software worse.
It used to not be the case, but as of the past decade or so, it seems like more and more software is getting lower quality or substantially bug ridden. Not just on windows either. It’s everything now.
Back in the day, each update used to fix bugs, add genuinely useful features, and were eagerly anticipated. Now, I get to do lovely things like RMA a bricked steam deck on stable channel or listen to New Teams’ ringer doubling, once before a call is picked up, and ringing again after the phone is answered. I wish I was joking for either of these.
On that topic, is there an alternative for a mail client + calendar for Win 11 that doesn’t look and feel like a Windows 95 exe named Thunderbird?
eM Client is the absolute best I’ve ever used.
This looks like Win 95 to you?
To be fair, that is the concept art, the real thing looks more like this:
Certainly not Windows 95, but not as good as the concept art. Yet people still complain A LOT, because it breaks theor two decade old CSS and “looks like a electron app” (whatever that means…).
If someone tells me “it looks like an electron app” I assume they mean “doesn’t have a native window bar”
Actually this the first time I noticed Thunderbird don’t have a native window bar LOL.
Like who looks at window bar all day?!
Of course, this is what I see /s
Real.
Thunderbird did get a UI overhaul semi-recently so it might offer what you’re after now.
I also liked eM Client which has a free version.
I must’ve missed this by a thread when I gave Thunderbird another shot six months ago. Cool!
I’ve been using Thunderbird and loving it. They’re developing a mobile app now as well!
There’s surprisingly few standalone email clients for normal people on desktop platforms as far as I know.
Reading through their mail merge tutorial, their method looks insanely risky: putting all addresses in “to” and rembering to click another button.
Yeah no shit, and you do think I have a single goddamn bit of influence over my corporation’s choice of email client??
Worth noting that Outlook the Office suite component, and Outlook, the freebie mail client that comes with Windows, are not the same thing. They’re just named the same because yadda yadda executives yadda yadda name recognition yadda yadda brand synergy.
Unless your employer is one of the very few that doesn’t provide Office to its users, this isn’t about the version you are required to use.
They can leech all the data they want from my employer. I don’t give a fuck. Never use company assets for personal business as an addendum.
Just be a little more careful with your own stuff, s’all.
Depends on your sector of work. Imagine you’re a therapist or a lawyer…
Touché.
A lot of healthcare and education institutions use Outlook as well, so I wouldn’t be surprised if mental health or legal uses it too. There may be rules about what kind of client/student/patient information can be sent over email, and often there are healthcare/institution specific variants of the office suites which (are supposed to) meet regulatory requirements
I think the other comment applies regardless. Do work things on the work device/account and let the workplace handle any other concerns. When it comes time to discuss alternatives, you can make a case for something else
I mean it even harvests typing data and Outlook also includes calendars etc… It’s really bad.
But yes, I just suggested a re-evaluation of the use of Microsoft Outlook to my company …
What would you get them to use instead? I use Proton personally, but I doubt many companies are using it at scale.
Use geary as a client with a private company selfhosted mailserver.
A company would use a Microsoft 365 plan that includes Outlook for Office 365, not a Windows Mail app. An the MS365 agreement would come with protections of company data from sharing with advertisers.
In other words, I wouldn’t worry if my company used Outlook. But never log in to your private mailbox from a corporate device.
Cloud services who want the business of healthcare providers usually offer a separate service for customers who need enhanced privacy.
Google etc have this option.
Also Microsoft has “pay for enterprise control” for businesses. Businesses can pay for their data not to be collected or at least sent to a business controlled server.
There are dozens of articles about mental health systems selling patient data.
People are worried about these dystopian futures, completely unaware that we’re living in one today. You can’t do anything, go anywhere, or buy anything without it being logged and sold for profit. Not without spending years of your time becoming a cyber security expert.
All of it is compatible with HIPAA.
How?
There is more than one country on this planet.
Yes, and plenty of them use HIPPA or variants of it as a standard. There will certainly be a control mapping from any other law or standard used and 365 is going to be mostly compatible with them all.
Not trying to dismiss your view, but I am not aware of any country outside US using HIPPA as a standard. I’m also not an expert in this so probably mistaken. Which country are you thinking of?
There are different versions of Outlook depending on your subscription. Companies that do things properly, never see the problematic, “free version” of Outlook. They have very fine control over the features and data collections they enable.
Corporations will just have a contract that guarantees no harmful use of their data and not care about the details. They just want the lines to be able to sue if there’s an issue in the future. And honestly, I don’t see the issue with companies agreeing to collect data on each other. The issue is with private life, which should never be shared on company tools.
well, as far as you use it just for your work, who cares, right? It’s the same as I’d never use Lastpass, my corp use it and even offered it for our personal use :D thanks, but no thanks! For personal use I would never use any microsoft solution.
pretty sure when you bring that up to your company, that another company will have access to internal communication, that they will do something against it. It’s a willing data breach.
There’s no other company with all the required certification that can replace Microsoft office suite so all corporations are stuck with it and tbh nobody cares.
Perhaps nobody in the US or in jobs with non-sensitive data cares about that. In the EU this could backfire hard against Microsoft.
This aint 365. This is a standalone thing.
There are plenty of other services that have the compliance check boxes. Most of them are garbage, expensive, and don’t come with 5% of the other tools that MS does.
There is a choice, and companies choose ms because it is best.
Why is your corp using the free mail app in windows??
Because it’s free in windows.
Let me introduce you to https://davmail.sourceforge.net/
Yes it works pretty fine with stupid O365. You can basically use whatever mailclient you desire with it.
“I heard you like data collection so we put data collecting email app in your data collecting OS so we can collect data about our data collection”
deleted by creator
Should I make it into a ‘Yo Dawg’ meme?
Always
Powered by AI!
Of course it is, it doesn’t support pop3, only IMAP through their server
For a few years, I had hope that Microsoft would become a respectable, user-oriented, even FOSS-friendly company, but they finally seem to have settled on AI enshitification as their main business model.
To be fair, Microsoft is a big company with various divisions. Parts of Microsoft are doing really great work in the FOSS area I would say, but really only if you’re a developer. As a general user… they do kind of suck yet.
WSL was a good start, change comes slowly to monoliths but they always have shareholder value as their defining principle so it’s a real tightrope.
Change to Linux on main PC when?
15 years ago. But I still gotta use Windows at work.
When gaming is 100% the same on Linux you’ll see more people pick it up.
It’s already happened — 90% of games will work flawlessly now on both Windows and Linux. It’s just that the remaining 10% are different on each platform, for various reasons. Pick your poison. Usually it’s those 10% that will dictate the decision for you — but the OS itself has stopped making a difference for gaming years ago.
FOSS friendly company
I’m not sure what you are smoking but you’re high as balls dude. If there is any company that has as it’s motto “fuck and destroy open source” and as slogan “fuck everything for money”, then it’s Microsoft.
Microsoft paid SCO to make false claims against Linux in an attempt to destroy Linux and extort large companies away from Linux. The destroy part failed, but they got multiple large companies to steer away from Linux. Normal people would go to jail for that, Microsoft execs not so much.
Totally agree with that. MS is an evil fuck company hellbent on destroying Linux from the inside. But Linux is not a container or box or thing one can just destroy. It’s been fun watching them support Linux to try to infiltrate something. They haven’t realized that there’s nothing to infiltrate.
They haven’t realized that there’s nothing to infiltrate.
There’s always something. The whole point of infiltration is that it shouldn’t be detected until the frog is edible.
Ridiculing one’s enemy is just always the wrong thing to do, no exceptions.
They’re latest strategy is to be FOSS… Ohh look at us! We can run Ubuntu from Windows now! We give money to Foss for development. Let’s give foss GitHub so they can store all their software safely with us!..blah blah bam! Let’s make this free software not free anymore…let’s fire these key Foss people…let’s make GitHub hard to access. Microsoft is a sneaky bastard for sure.
Like if proton was a VPS kind of thingy, even like some form of managed mail service through a docker container or something, where the user had control? That would be nice. But even then, who’s to say they aren’t monitoring the mail communication from the other end of that? You can’t really trust any of these mail providers, because they simply have too much control over the days.
That’s nothing we didn’t already know.
