So my wife finally got all of her mail transferred from Outlook Express on the old machine, to Outlook on the new machine. Now, she's just trying to see if there's any way to make the UI not suck eggs. At the top of the Window (this is Outlook 2003), there's this large brown bar labelled "Inbox", and - for reasons that defy our understanding - a button kind of area that has something to do with drag/drop sorting of the columns (never mind that you can do this by clicking on a column header already, which is simpler).

There seems to be no way to get rid of that large area of wasted space at the top of the Outlook Window, and the toolbars (which you can dismiss) are just so much visual clutter. If I had any doubts about staying with Eudora, this vicarious experience with Outlook has removed them.

So why is this atrocity so widely used? Is an integrated calendar worth it? Whatever team in Redmond is responsible for the UI of this thing should hang their heads in shame. I'd relate my wife's comments on this, but I try to avoid that kind of language on this blog...