Replacement for Outlook?

TangoWhiskey

TangoWhiskey

Touchdown! Greaser!
Joined
Feb 23, 2005
Messages
14,210
Location
Midlothian, TX
Display Name
Display name:
3Green
I have a friend in Seattle who is trying to migrate away from Microsoft Office. He has OpenOffice and likes it, but called me last night to ask "what to use instead of Outlook". When I suggested Gmail or Thunderbird, he said "yeah, but neither of those have to-do lists, calendar, etc., and I use those religiously". When I told him Google has an online Calendar that works well, he said "does it sync with my PDA for offline access"?

Hmmm... he doesn't have an iPhone, so we're talking about true offline sync. Anybody know of a good open-source mail/calendar/to-do-list Outlook replacement?

Better yet will be if it can import the Outlook items he already has during install...
 
TangoWhiskey said:
I have a friend in Seattle who is trying to migrate away from Microsoft Office. He has OpenOffice and likes it, but called me last night to ask "what to use instead of Outlook". When I suggested Gmail or Thunderbird, he said "yeah, but neither of those have to-do lists, calendar, etc., and I use those religiously". When I told him Google has an online Calendar that works well, he said "does it sync with my PDA for offline access"?

Hmmm... he doesn't have an iPhone, so we're talking about true offline sync. Anybody know of a good open-source mail/calendar/to-do-list Outlook replacement?

Better yet will be if it can import the Outlook items he already has during install...
Click to expand...

Id hes using a blackberry he'll want to look into GoogleSync. Beyond that, I know of nothing.
 
There is a lot in the works but NOTHING that compares to Outlook. Even my open source/*nix nutters in my technical operations groups say that with Outlook Microsoft "got it right". *shrug*
 
tdager said:
There is a lot in the works but NOTHING that compares to Outlook. Even my open source/*nix nutters in my technical operations groups say that with Outlook Microsoft "got it right". *shrug*
Click to expand...

I was going to say that Outlook is the one part of MS Office that I couldn't do without. Coupled to an Exchange server and we'd die without it. There are substitutes for the rest of the suite, but Outlook stands alone in its capabilities. And we're getting a new version of Exchange this week that will enhance the functionality even further.
 
>but Outlook stands alone in its capabilities

the mind boggles....
 
Bob Noel said:
>but Outlook stands alone in its capabilities

the mind boggles....
Click to expand...

I hear ya, but it is true. Outlook + Exchange (especially 2007) is simply the best calendar/PIM on the market, period.

As others have stated, for Word or Excel there are decent alternatives, but nothing touches Outlook with Exchange, nothing.
 
What kind of PDA? I've worked with a few open-source calender / scheduling / PIM programs over the years (though not recently) that worked decently with a Palm. Most of them originally were written for Linux, but I'm sure some have been ported to Windows.

You may want to try looking through Sourceforge to see what's available. They have more than 600 projects listed under calendering. (Unfortunately, their search server is down at the moment, so that was about as far as I could get.)

Rich
 
tdager said:
I hear ya, but it is true. Outlook + Exchange (especially 2007) is simply the best calendar/PIM on the market, period.

As others have stated, for Word or Excel there are decent alternatives, but nothing touches Outlook with Exchange, nothing.
Click to expand...
Zimbra is pretty close for an Exchange replacement. For many people the AJAXY web client is more useful than Outlook. For others that still want/need Outlook they can still use it.
http://www.zimbra.com/

In the end, I agree, that Exchange makes the most sense for many businesses.
 
tdager said:
I hear ya, but it is true. Outlook + Exchange (especially 2007) is simply the best calendar/PIM on the market, period.

As others have stated, for Word or Excel there are decent alternatives, but nothing touches Outlook with Exchange, nothing.
Click to expand...

Nothing touches the combo, assuming its relatively limited abilities are sufficient for your needs...
 
I guess I just don't understand adulation for jamming multiple functionally distinct capabilities together.
 
Bob Noel said:
I guess I just don't understand adulation for jamming multiple functionally distinct capabilities together.
Click to expand...

Only if you need them together, for certain.

The linkage of contacts with documents with time with calendar with notes...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top