Outlook (new) (a webversion in a wrapper, so it only has half of the functions, but they force you to use it while planning to deprecate the proper version)
But it comes with new features too, like an ad at the top of your message list every time you open it! We should consider ourselves lucky that they’re giving this to us for free!
/s
Except the Windows version of Outlook (New) doesn’t work with all of their data centers - but the web version and Mac version do - because they didn’t fully write out the authentication framework for high security tenants so you’re forced to use Outlook (Classic) until they “eventually” update it.
.exe
Hey, that’s a Google move!
Why does it matter if it’s a web version, if all mail messages today are HTML anyway?
It’s actually the only program on the desktop that have valid reasons to be web-based.
It matters, because it’s not about messages, it’s about the interface and all the logic which was built over a long period of time. Having an OS-native gui is better because it’s faster, it’s “already there” and not just loads, and it’s all done in the desktop app already.
As a good comparison - what would you choose for any service on your smartphone - an app or a really nice mobile website?
Outlook (newer)
- Outlook (newest)
- Outlook (even newester)
- Outlook (okay, for real, actually the last one, we promise)
- Outlook (okay, just one more, this time we fixed all the bugs)
- Outlook (okay, so turns out a few people decided to take the last versions name as a challenge and they kinda a little bit deleted our production server, but we plugged that hole, so should be fine now)
Outlook_New_Final_FINAL_2025_FINALREAL (1) (1).rtf
Outlook (latest newest newer new final definitive edition v2.0)
What about the inevitable (based on years of development experience):
Outlook (new) New - Final - 2025-04-17 - THIS IS THE ONE.lnkMy team at work is always confused when I ask if they’re using Outlook or New Outlook (new) New
Did you say Teams at work? Did you mean New Teams or Classic Teams? Did you want to swich back to Old Teams or stick with Current Teams? Or did you mean the Teams feature within Teams?
Clearly I meant the personal Teams app that they couldn’t log into with their work 365 account so they used the create account feature to log in with their personal Gmail account, and are now fuming because they can’t find work files.
As a help desk worker this shit is so fucking annoying.
Oof hell desk, yea I left that behind as fast as I could. It was nice and all being chill not worrying about budgets, policies, “IT business alignment” and such
But god damn if I had to deal with Beatrice’s weekly hour+ password reset call one more time I was going to lose it lol
The basic Mail app in Windows 10 is still the baseline I compare every other email client to, and I’ve yet to find anything I like as much. Unfortunately, for obvious reasons, it only ever ran under Windows, and for stupid reasons, it was deprecated and now if you try to launch it, it exits and launches Outlook (New), which is a horrible email client.
Outlook (new) is not even a “mail client” at all. It’s an Edge “webview” web app. Adding an account to this “app” actually allows outlook.com the website to sync your entire mailbox, read its contents, and “share” all of that data with their (last checked, could have changed since) 798 “data partners”.
Install Thunderbird.
Before someone says “it’s not pretty enough, I don’t like it”, if the price for privacy is a shiny theme, I’ve got nothing dumb enough to say to you. You’re beyond helping and you’re not worth my time.
Edit ^ that last bit wasn’t about you, person I responded to, just realized it sounded like it was.
My 86 year old father-in-law has had the roughest time with the new outlook. It keeps losing his settings. I kept him on the (old) outlook as long as possible.
I tried Thunderbird for him, but some parts of the UI don’t respect extremely large fonts. Sigh.
My current solution is just straight up web mail to his provider which has other problems, but I have sorta-kinda mitigated them by installing a separate browser that is set to open that website. This has some other small problems, but it will have to do for now.
I honestly wish Apple made a 20” iPad.
But Thunderbird is also technically a web app? It’s UI is literally made in (X)HTML/CSS/JS.
The message viewing component is, of course. Emails are html. The application itself is not a web app.
I have literally said that it is, and provided proof.
And it stores the data where
locally
Thunderbird is basically an Outlook-from-fifteen-years-ago clone, and I’ve always disliked Outlook, even before the recent push to make it even worse. Everything I disliked about old Outlook is exactly the same in Thunderbird, except the licence.
I don’t want much from a mail client, just:
- basic stuff works
- I can see an unread email count for each of my accounts at the same time, and also have the list of messages for the account I’m looking at and a reading/writing pane at the same time, too.
Thunderbird and Outlook will only show the unread count once you’ve expanded the list of directories in an account, so once you’ve got more than two accounts with a reasonable number of folders, any further accounts end up pushed off the bottom of the screen. This isn’t something that a theme for Thunderbird can change. It’d be a small change to include a total unread count next to the list item for each account when it wasn’t expanded and a total unread count next to the combined inbox button, but I’m not maintaining a fork of a mail client myself when it’d still be too Outlook-like to avoid being annoying.
In the end, I settled on Mailspring, but it doesn’t score brilliantly on the basic stuff works bullet point.
Why do we still associate these changes with Gates?
Marketing gives you more fame than inventing
Meh, I’m gonna wait for Outlook Mail (new)
2meirl4meirl:
Thunderbird
My Outlook still has the yellow icon. Changed it back manually because I kept opening Outlook by mistake when I tried to open Word.
Outlook, Teams, Word, Edge, it’s all blue. Really fucking annoying
it makes me laugh me i see people complaining about “linux can’t even get their fonts straight !1!1”, brother what are smoking, windows can’t even show text it s all, it’s just smeared image that you can’t select, on top of inconsistent window styles accumulated since 1993 lol.
macs are the only competitor to Linux
FFS Microsoft, just put out a functional OS. I even really liked the Windows 11 Beta/RC, but what it became once commercialized got me to switch to Fedora on my main PC and swear off getting another Surface.
Did I ever tell you the definition of insanity
