I’ve had email since 1995 but I have never used Outlook Express; indeed, I really don’t even know what it is exactly and why anyone would need it. I have an email address @yahoo.com that I have had forever and that is all I’ve ever needed. But everyone seems to use Outlook Express (do do what?) and I’ve seen people post on this board who are in some kind of desperate situation because their Outlook Express isn’t working. I read the Wiki article on Outlook Express and I still can’t figure out what its purpose is. Can someone please enlighten me?
I don’t know but I’m still trying to figure out how get rid of it. For example, when I click a link to send mail how do I change it from Outlook Express to Comcast or Yahoo?
Seriously? Outlook Express exists because some POP3 users don’t want to mess with Thunderbird and/or don’t want to buy Outlook.
And of the three, I prefer Express for newsgroups.
I still have no idea what it is or does.
It is a perfectly fine bundled e-mail client. If someone doesn’t have a MS Office or even one that includes real Outlook, they can still get e-mail through a client that looks roughly like Outlook but doesn’t have some fancy features like a shared calendar. It is a valuable application for someone that wants to buy a basic PC with windows to get e-mail and surf the web. It is designed to mimic Outlook but Outlook costs $$$ and many people don’t need the features.
Outlook Express (along with many other programs such as Eudora, Thunderbird and Outlook (to name a few)) is what is known as a “POP Email Client.”
What you have, Yahoo, is Web-based email.
All email is sent via a protocol called SMTP. You can send email using a standalone client (ie Outlook Express) or a Web-based client (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc)
On a standalone client, you are composing the email on your computer and sending it via your SMTP connection that begins with your computer, goes via SMTP to your ISP (internet service provider), which sends the piece of mail to the recipient’s SMTP server which then routes the mail to your recipient’s email account.
On Webmail, you are not saving anything on your computer. The message is being saved on Yahoo’s computer and sent via Yahoo’s SMTP to the recipient’s SMTP (then the same as above).
If you composed an email at home on Yahoo and saved it, it will be on your Yahoo account if you log in to Yahoo using a different computer because it’s been saved on Yahoo’s server.
If you compose an email at home on Outlook Express and save it, then go to your granny’s house and opened her copy of Outlook Express on her computer, your email will not be there because it’s saved on your computer at home.
So that’s the composing and sending half. It’s pretty much the same for the receiving half (which is where POP comes in).
In an email client such as Outlook, your computer connects through the POP protocol, logs you in to your ISP’s mail server, looks to see if there’s any emails in your inbox, and then downloads the messages to your computer. Doesn’t matter if the email was sent via Webmail (like Yahoo or Hotmail) or a client like Outlook…the message was sent via SMTP and exists on someone’s server as a message in your inbox (which is why we have protocols).
When you go to Yahoo (or any webmail) you are logging in to Yahoo’s computer and they are showing you your message right from there server. There is no downloading. Their server is acting as a mail client like Outlook but in a different presentation (a web browser). If you log in to Yahoo from home you see the same thing as if you log in to Yahoo from granny’s computer - because in this case you are not looking on YOUR computer or GRANNY’s computer you are looking on YAHOO’S computer.
So if you can have your email accessible from anywhere in the world via webmail, why use a client?
Well, some people (like me) like to save/store all of their email. I can have 500GB of email messages stored here on my computer if I want because I have 500GB of hard drive space. I can configure my email client however I want. I also can have a unique email domain name (mycompany.com instead of yahoo.com) (this is also available in webmail - more in a minute). Other people feel their mail is more secure this way because they can control how the email is encrypted when it comes down to their computer and when it sits on their computer. Other people like to be able to log in, download, and disconnect (mostly true for dialup users)…then read, compose answers, log in, send and disconnect.
Whether or not you use webmail or a pop client is a matter of personal preference, or company preference (in the case of work email). I don’t know of any serious company that does not use pop mail (but I am sure they exist).
Also, as in the case of my own company/domain and many other companies/domains (even ISPs, like Time Warner)…you have the option of either downloading OR using a webmail system.
If I am on vacation I can log in to my company’s webmail system and view my mail without downloading it. Same as you do at Yahoo. I can access it from anywhere in the world. It is not downloaded on to any computer and it resides on the server until I delete it…OR until I check it using my pop client (Eudora) which I have set up to remove emails from the server as I download them (as opposed to leaving a copy on the server, which is another popular setting).
To close…as for what Outlook Express is…well, it’s Microsoft’s free version of Outlook. Outlook is their huge mail client program that comes with Office. It does a ton of things, more than just email. It does scheduling, has an address book, lets you set up tasks, etc (I can’t get in to ALL of what it does, as I don’t use it). Outlook Express is the lighter version which pretty much just gets mail and allows for newsgroup access (someone else can explain what that is if you care).
Microsoft installs Outlook Express with Windows for the same reason they install Internet Explorer with windows - market share. “It’s there, might as well use it.”
Caridwen - Since Yahoo is not a program, you can’t get Windows to send a link to it. Yahoo is a web site on the Internet. Windows would need to be able to open a browser, browse to Yahoo, log you in, click “Send” or “compose” or whatever, and place the recipient’s email address in the “To:” field. Not gonna happen. If you have never installed an email client on your computer, Outlook Express is the only program you have for senging mail that is INSTALLED ON YOUR COMPUTER. So when you click an email link, all your browser knows how to do is “open the default mail client and add this address to the TO field”…in your case, the default one is the only one you’ve installed.
Whew. Now it’s time for people to come nitpick me on things I was trying to explain that are only half-truths. But really, guys, I am trying to explain this most simply.
I think you did pretty good. 
I’ve never used anything but Outlook Express. It does all I need it to do.
I can check my e-mail from other computers – new messages are there for viewing on my ISP’s website. I just can’t access the old ones from there.
Thanks ZipperJJ, that was a great explanation. So Outlook Express exists because it lets you store your emails on your own computer. Wow. Instead of opening your webmail, hitting “select all” and saving as a text file. Instead of composing the email in Wordpad or notepad and hitting “select all” and pasting it into the message box of your webmail. Gees, there are some lazy buggers in this world, aren’t there?
Is it true that Outlook (and Express) is the program most often hacked by viruses and trojans to hijack all the addresses in your e-mail list, to send everyone you know more garbage? Or is that just rumor? I know I’ve read about it, otherwise I couldn’t make something like that up.
That said, I’ve never even opened the program. I’ve used successive versions of Netscape for e-mail and browsing since 1996.
Actually, Outlook Express is specifically designed to catch and transmit whatever PC viruses might be floating around on the intarwebs at the moment.
Aye, the purpose of outlook is to ensure that viruses continue to get spread.
Yeah, I covered that. Yahoo is webmail-based and you can only access it via the web (unless you have a paid account, which I think you can access through a client). Hotmail is also webmail based but now you have the option to get it via Outlook (but not Outlook Express…again, I think…) Most ISPs now give you the option of using webmail OR downloading at your leisure. So it’s not so much either/or anymore but in principle one generally has a webmail account or a pop account, and some people (more now than ever) have the ability to use their email in both ways.
I’m sort of shocked (but slowly learning) that there are some people who only know webmail exists, and some who only know pop clients exist. I happened to have “cut my teeth” on the whole emailing thing by carrying around a copy of Eudora on a diskette, running it from said diskette, downloading my mail and saving it again to the same diskette (in college, on the college’s network). Shortly after I got into this groove, the school introduced webmail (their own system) and everyone started using that as the norm, so the kids who came after me probably got used to webmail first in the same way I got used to pop mail first. Now, most systems offer both options and it all depends on what you’re used to doing. Me, I still use Eudora but in a proper way, on the hard drive and everything 
Check out the Wikipedia entry on Email for more thorough explanations of everything.
Yeah, because it’s so popular. Most companies use Outlook. Most people who use pop email clients use Outlook (because it comes with Office, and they use Office) or Outlook Express (because it comes with Windows, and they use Windows). So if you want to write a virus that will be able to manipulate the most email clients, you write one for Outlook/Outlook Express and you’ve got the most people by the balls.
Same for Internet Explorer and Windows - most used, most targeted. So while Tuckerfan and Yag are sort of kidding, what they say has some merit. Outlook isn’t inherently bad, it is just so ubiquitous that it makes for a very easy target for hackers. As soon as something else comes along and usurps Outlook’s market share, the same thing will happen to that. But it will take many moons for that to happen, as the corporate IT world tends to move very slowly in that regard.
I still don’t understand why Outlook is so popular with home e-mail users. I used it way back when I first connected to the internet. I thought email was so cool, and my ISP gave me a free email account to use!
Then I moved, and had to sign up for a new ISP. Guess what happened? Correct, I lost my old e-mail address. It took me months to re-sign up for all my mailing lists. To this day I’m pretty sure I probably missed a few. Never again, I say.
Since that day, I’ve used hotmail. Heck, my account is so old, my password is still only 4 alpha-numeric characters. I just don’t see how so many people are content with having to change their e-mail addresses every time they move.
Well, don’t forget that not everyone uses an email address tied to their ISP. I have never used mine. I’ve been able to keep my college account many years after graduating. I have my work account(s). I could have email with any domain I own. I know people who buy theirlastname.com just so they can have email@theirlastname.com and never actually develop the site.
You can get POP email from Gmail. You can get it from Hotmail. You can get it by buying a domain name from GoDaddy for $9/year. You can get it through EarthLink or Juno or SBC/Yahoo which you can subscribe to almost anywhere in the country.
Using Outlook doesn’t mean you’re using your ISP’s email address they have assigned to you. It just means that you are using some POP account from some server somewhere, be it your ISP’s or someone else’s.
You need an internet connection to download POP mail (you also need it to view webmail), and you need access to port 110 via your ISP (and port 25 for SMTP). Some ISPs require that you use their SMTP server instead of your mail provider’s SMTP server and some take it a step further and require that you use your ISP’s login info (yourname@yourisp.com) for SMTP authentication to be able to send, but even in those cases you can still send as whatever@whatever.com and check mail as whatever@whatever.com.
I was just considering this today. I want to move from cable to FiOS; however, changing email addys is one reason that I’m not willing to do it.
Well, I’d call that a poor characterization at best.
In addition to ZipperJJ’s excellent explanation, let me just say that a good POP client (I use Eudora rather than Outlook) is a much better tool for managing mail than any web based email I’ve seen.
The only advantage I see to webmail is convenience of being able to see all your mail from any internet connected computer. In some situations, this is very important.
But this is offset by the huge disadvantage (IMO) of not being able to see your mail when you’re not online, and the incredible pain of managing multiple accounts.
For example, I have email accounts on 12 different email domains. With webmail, I’d have to sign on to each one separately, and manage the mail separately. Granted I’m probably a little unusual in this respect. I have my main account that I use for most of my email. I’m the email admin for several of my customers, so I have accounts on each of their systems I have to monitor. Plus I have some special accounts setup for specific purposes that I like to keep separate.
Using a POP client I can hit the check mail button and check mail on 12 accounts without doing anything else (my user IDs and passwords are saved). Then I can easily go through the mail and replay where needed with each reply automatically going out from the email account it was sent to.
Additionally, there are other advantages:
- I can do searches for messages (both inbound and outbound) across all accounts with a single search.
- Attachments are always on my hard drive to use or refer to as needed without the need for a separate download.
- I can look at any email I’ve ever received (back to about 1995 anyway) whether I’m on line or not.
- If I change email providers, all my mail is still available to me without having to worry about forwarding or downloading before an account is discontinued.
Webmail can be very useful and easy, and for many users can be a good choice. But for the full range of email management, a good local mail client is far better.
You consider somebody lazy simply because they don’t want to use complicated procedures instead of simple ones?! Interesting definition of lazy. Having my e-mail on my computer is not the equivalent of cutting and pasting from webmail into a text document; they are saved as e-mail messages with all the metadata associated with an e-mail message (individual e-mail addresses, priorities, flags, read/not read indicators, attachments, etc.). For example, if you want to retain messages on your own computer and want to keep the attachments to those messages associated with the messages, how would you do it with your cut and paste method?
I will grant that changing ISPs is a disadvantage for some users of non-web-based systems, but not everyone changes ISPs regularly.
Outlook express can let you read newsgroups. I don’t know if the full grown Outllook offers this, but I could be wrong.
Historically, webmail is the newest method of access. Email existed for years before the web was invented and the web existed for years before the advent of free near-universal webmail when folks began viewing & managing their email at a website. So in that sense, OE & other mail clients are a holdover from the old days.
I can understand how a home user who doesn’t have work email and primarily thinks of PCs as nothing but web terminals / browser devices, and who’s only experience with email is a free account from yahoo / gmail / hotmail / etc. would wonder why an email client would be useful.
Going back to the OP’s most recent post (#8), he indicates he uses [save emails as text files] & [compose emails in a separate word processor] as techniques to work around the limitations of the browser-based email he uses. Sounds like an excellent candidate for learning how better tools would make his life easier.
May I suggest an email client is just the tool for the job? They’ve been out for many years & nice fully featured ones are available cheap. OE works well & is the certainly the right price (free).
To the folks going on about OE security flaws, that was much the case 3+ years ago. It now has the same attention paid to its flaws as other MSFT software has. I leave it to you to decide if that’s good enough for you. But OE today isn’t the bastard stepchild security-wise that it once was.
IMHO OE is one of the few M$ products that is not total bloatware and works pretty well. A good reason to chose it would be when you don’t always have a active internet connection, or you have a slow internet connection. Basically once your email is downloaded you can proceed without using the internet at all. You can search, and reply offline (though you have to connect to actually send).