Hi Roady;

Thanks for the detailed heads-up - that explains a fair few things.

So OK, let me see if I got this right:

Outlook 2007 treats IMAP based accounts (i.e. hotmail accounts) differently
to let’s say your average pop3 account. Hence the IMAP accounts don’t show up
in the Personal folder, nor do they allow for notification

Wasn’t the idea of the addition of the Outlook Connector to integrate IMAP
accounts into Outlook?

Well, if that integration is limited, as it now seems to be, what’s the
point of having Outlook Connector?

One rather important aspect of any email client is to notify the user of
incoming mail. If Outlook doesn’t do that for integrated accounts such as
IMAP, then it’s rather useless to most users that use IMAP accounts – and
yes, our numbers are growing rapidly.

This limitation, plus the various other, and rather serious, instability
issues of Outlook 2007 (Word as the new HTML client instead of far more
secure IE, Outlook’s inability to handle large inboxes, disastrous
performance issues, instabilities of al sorts and so on) as reported across
the net, really raises this question:

Is it time to trash Outlook and simply use an online based email client such
as Windows Live Mail, Gmail et al?

From a user-friendly point of view that answer is definitely a yes. From a
security point of view it is yes again. From a cost analysis point of view
it’s yes yet again.

As much as I like Outlook, I can see the end of its life, its slow death, so
to speak, going the way Eudora and others went before.

It’s one of those prime examples where some guys inside Microsoft had some
very bright ideas only to be knocked down by someone else inside Microsoft
who simply can’t see the future lurking around that corner.

It’s a shame really, and something Bill Gates should perhaps concentrate his
not inconsiderable influence on. Would be a shame to see Outlook pass into
the land of never-ever-again …

As for this chappy, I’m going to kick out Outlook 2007 and use Windows Live
Mail which by all accounts seems to have far less problems.