dwer> As with most things 'Microsoft', Outlook Express was bought in from an dwer> outside company because it was so far superior to anything M$ dwer> had in house.
Indeed, the many people who praise or attack M$ as a technology company completely miss the point. M$ started out as a technology company, producing Basic for personal 70s computers for instance, then got handed an amazing marketing base for their piss poor CPM clone when it was adopted by IBM. Since then they have been an amazingly sucessful marketing company, buying in technology and turning it into sucessful products.
This is why they have such a bad record on security and stability. The fundementals of most of their products are not theirs and in any case their business model doesn't allow them to do more than beat about with the surface bits and get it out the door.
dwer> I presume that the mail/news agent of choice in future will be Outlook?
From a statement I read it looks more like they would like to persuade people to move to web based services like hotmail. The depressing thing is that there might be enough suckers for this to work. Their primary goal is to ensure that people become more and more totally dependent on them. They were really pissed off when the internet took off and sank the planned MSN, and have been working towards getting back on route to the goal of all windows users being trapped into a M$ propriatary online system ever since.
dwer> I know it is fashionable to knock all things M$ but OE does seem to work!
Are you a virus writer? :-)