So my wife wanted to export her mail - the messages and account settings - from Outlook Express on machine 1 to Outlook on machine 2. You would think this would be easy - same network, all MS apps - but no, it's a two step dance of pain. Here's what we ended up doing:

• Zipping up the Outlook Express directory structure (under My Documents)
• Sending that to Machine 2
• Trying to import the result into Outlook - nah, that didn't work. Outlook didn't claim to recognize it
• Google for help, find MS support pages that are helpfully useless in anything but IE
• Finally realize that the step to take is to import into Outlook Express on machine 2, at which point Outlook can import from Outlook Express.

Sheesh. It was fairly quick once we figured it out, but there was no good reason for us to have to take the side trip through OE on machine 2. Someone needs to find Ballmer and crew and point out the term "Usability". It's pretty damn clear to me that they haven't heard of it.

Heh - even better. We finally got it all done, and my wife actually looked at Outlook. Her reaction makes me look downright positive about that abortion of an application. The user interface is more cluttered than I remember it - like many MS apps, it seems to have gotten worse with age. So now it's off to find a mail client that isn't cluttered as all get out and can import from Outlook...