Re: [Evolution] Comments on Evolution 1.2

[Etienne Tourigny <et omeo ca>]

On Mon, 2002-11-18 at 17:58, Arthur S. Alexion wrote:
> On Monday 18 November 2002 03:41 pm, Russell Stuart wrote:
> > Last week I made the move from Outlook to Evolution 1.2. I thought I
> > would give some feed back on things I am having difficulty adjusting
> > to.
>
> And then Russell goes on to point out some differences in the details 
> between Outlook and Evolution.
>
> I thought I'd respond from the opposite perspective.  
>
> In 1997, and again in 1998, I tried Outllook as it came with my copy of 
> MS Office 97.  I really disliked the way it did things, some of which 
> seemed ok for MSMail, but really seemed unnatural to me for internet 
> mail.  

> I didn't like the way that it forced a PIM into my MUA, either.  
> I was using another PIM that I liked very much, and was annoyed that I 
> had to install the PIM components of Outlook which I had no intention 
> of using.  

Interesting that you don't like a MUA with PIM components - just like
Evolution!  Is that one of the "similarities of Evolution to Windows are
its drawbacks" ?

I sort of agree with you.  If I didn't use the PIM components (which I
do, along with Palm sync) I would not like them to be included with the
main application.  But then again once you have an addressbook for your
email contacts a full contact manager is just the next step (although a
long one).  But the Calendar and Tasks have no place in a MUA-only
application.

Evo developers: are there any plans to modularize the PIM components of
Evolution?  This way they could be used by other Gnome apps very easily
(I guess).  And the resulting binaries would be smaller for someone who
needs just a Mailer.  And it would load quicker. And... that's about it.

> I quickly went back to Pegasus.  When Pegasus seemed to fall 
> behind for a while, I tried Outlook again, didn't like it any better 
> and quickly switched to Eudora.
>
> After moving from Windows to Linux, I got to really enjoy using kmail 
> in KDE.  However, I decided to give Gnome a whirl.  Unhappy with Balsa, 
> I decided to try Evolution.
>
> For me the similarities of Evolution to Windows are its drawbacks.  Not 
> necessarily bad, but not for those of us who abandoned Windows to get 
> away from it, not so that we could exchange it for its open source look 
> alike.

Actually most people run away from the problems in Windows itself. 
Outlook is just the most popular mailer.  I don't have a problem with
using a product that looks like a Microsoft product.  I just want it not
to behave LIKE a Microsoft product.  And to me Evolution is that.  It
looks like Outlook, perhaps because the people at Ximian wanted the
Windows switch easy (because of the eye candy) for corporate users.  It
also probably responds in a similar manner to Outlook (I don't know
personally).  I like Evolution because it rocks, is Open Source, stable
and has may features.

> Interesting how different people can be.

That's what makes us special :)


Cheers,
Etienne