Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft Outlook is a
personal information manager and
email client program from
Microsoft, and is part of the
Microsoft Office\n
suite.
Although often used mainly as an
e-mail application, it also provides
calendar, task and contact management.
It can be used as a
stand-alone application, but can also operate in conjunction with
Microsoft Exchange Server to provide enhanced functions for multiple users in an organisation, such as shared mailboxes and calendars and meeting time allocation.
Versions for
Microsoft Windows include
- Outlook 97.\n*Outlook 98.\n*Outlook 2000 (also known as Outlook 9).\n*Outlook 2002 (also known as Outlook 10 or Outlook XP).\n*Office Outlook 2003.
Microsoft also released several versions of Outlook for the
Apple Macintosh, however, most mail features were disabled after Office 98. After Office 98,
Entourage replaced Outlook on Macintosh systems, however in
2001, Microsoft released Outlook 2001 for Mac to allow Classic users to access Exchange servers.
One of Microsoft's goals is for the email client to be easy to use. However, the embedded automation features and the disregard of security features (which would inconvenience a non-sophisticated user) were exploited by numerous people leading to a phenomenon of
email viruses, typically an email
attachment executing on the user machine, replicating itself via mass-mailing to the machine address list. Examples of such viruses are the
Melissa worm and the
Sobig worm.
Bill Joy has stated an opinion that the use of Outlook is a contributing factor to network insecurity because—due to its being written in
C—viruses propagate so easily with it.
As part of its
Trusted Computing initiative, Microsoft has recently took some corrective steps to fix Outlook's reputation as an insecure platform in its latest incarnation, Office Outlook 2003.
As of December 2003, it is too soon to tell how successful these changes have been.
See also
Category:Email clients Category:Microsoft software\n 