Differences among Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail and Windows Live Mail

Differences among
Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail and Windows Live Mail
by Dale Cockle, November 25, 2009

Microsoft Outlook, is an e-mail and Personal Information Manager (PIM). Although often used mainly as an e-mail application, it also includes a Calendar, Task Manager, Contact Manager, note taking, a journal and web browsing, hence being considered as a PIM. Many non-Microsoft programs and hardware (e.g., PDAs) are designed to synchronize with Outlooks several features, notably contacts and calendar.

Outlook is part of the Microsoft Office Suite but does not come with lower end version Office. Outlook can be purchased separately from Office. One or more versions of Outlook are available for all recent versions of Windows.

Outlook Express, an e-mail and news client bundled as part of Internet Explorer that, in turn, is bundled into Microsoft Windows earlier than Windows Vista.

Outlook Express was discontinued in 2006 with the release of Windows Vista that includes Windows Mail instead.

Windows Mail is an e-mail and newsgroup client included in Windows Vista. It is the successor to Outlook Express. Windows Mail is not considered to be a component of Internet Explorer as was Outlook Express. Windows Mail appears to be very similar to Outlook Express. However, there are many 'under-the-hood' changes. Significant new user features are:

• Bayesian junk-mail filtering and top-level domain and encoding blocking.
• A phishing filter that protects users from web sites that have been identified as being malicious.

Windows Mail has no integration with Windows Messenger like Outlook Express has.

Windows Mail does not support multiple identities as dows Outlook Express.

Windpws Mail has no provisions for spell checking.

Windows Mail is not included in the new Windows 7, having been replaced by Windows Live Mail in Windows 7. Windows Mail program files from Vista can be 'grafted' into Windows 7 if Windows 7 users don't want to switch from Outlook Express or Windows Mail to Windows Live Mail.

Windows Live Mail has succeeded Windows Mail starting in Windows 7. Windows Live Mail was built by the same development team as Windows Mail and is intended to be the replacement for Outlook Express for Windows XP.

Windows Live Mail has all of the features of Windows Mail. It also adds the following new features:

• Support for Web-based e-mail accounts including Windows Live Hotmail, Gmail/Google Mail, and Yahoo! Mail Plus.
• A different user interface which matches the other Windows Live "Wave 2" applications
• Synchronization with Windows Live Contacts
• Support for RSS feeds. Notable features include the ability to reply directly via email to the author of an item that appears in an RSS feed, and the ability to aggregate multiple feeds into a single folder. The RSS functionality requires Internet Explorer 7.
• Multi-line message lists, as in Outlook
• Emoticons can be used in e-mails and other functions
• In-line spell checking
• Separate inbox folders for different POP accounts
• Improved support for sending picture files in e-mails through the Photo email feature which uploads pictures to a web-based service and sends the URL and thumbnails in the mail. It can also perform basic photo correction and apply different border effects to pictures.

Future of Outlook Express and Windows Mail:
With the transition of Outlook Express to Windows Mail and then to Windows Live Mail, future support by Microsoft of Outlook Express and Windows Mail can be expected to decline. So, for those not wanting to go the Windows Live route (Windows Live includes Windows Live Mail as well as other functions), you must start thinking about a non-Microsoft e-mail program. The first one that I'd recommend is Thunderbird <http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/> that comes from Mozilla who also created the popular Firefox browser <http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/>. Also there's another product backed by Mozilla called SeaMonkey <http://www.seamonkey-project.org/>, an Internet suite that includes Firefox, Thunderbird and some other Internet applications.

(Win_MSEmailPrograms.htm)