Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
(Windows,Mac,etc....),andwhatmailserversoftwareisbeingusedbyyourmail
provider, which might be your employer; beyond that there is some room for
user preference. We will summarize some of the more common mail applica-
tions. A much more detailed summary can be viewed at Wikipedia (http://en.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_e-mail_clients, http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Comparison_of_webmail_providers).
If your organization's computer systems are largely Windows based, then
the mail server is likely to be
Microsoft Exchange
; and if your computer runs
Windows, then the choice of mail client will probably be Microsoft Office
Outlook
(sometimes just known as Outlook). This is very common in busi-
nesses and somewhat less common in college settings. Outlook is well inte-
gratedwithExchange,and,beyondprovidingmailcapabilityusingPOP,IMAP
or MAPI (in later versions of Outlook), also allows calendaring, task lists, and
contactlistsontheserver.NewerversionsalsoprovideanRSSfeedreader(RSS
is discussed in a later chapter). Outlook is part of the Microsoft Office suite.
Other mail clients are perfectly capable of accessing an Exchange server mail
storeusingeitherPOPorIMAP,butlikelywillnothavethesamecalendarand
contact tools. Similarly, Outlook can access mail from another type of mail
server, but will be limited to mail over POP or IMAP.
Microsoft Outlook Express
, also on Windows, is a product distinct from
Office Outlook, despite the similar name. It can get mail via POP and IMAP,
but not with MAPI. Recent versions of Outlook Express are integrated with
Windows Messenger IM client. Starting with Windows Vista, Microsoft is
replacing Outlook Express with a product called
Windows Live Mail
.
Mozilla Thunderbird
and
Mozilla SeaMonkey
are the descendants of the
Netscape Communicator
web and mail application suite. SeaMonkey is a
complete suite and includes browser, mail client, news and RSS reader.
Thunderbird is a smaller application and just includes the mail, news and RSS
clients.TheycommunicatewithamailserverwithPOPorIMAP.Theseappli-
cationsareavailableinverynearlythesameformonWindows,MacOSXand
on Linux. Thunderbird and SeaMonkey are available for free via download
(http://www.mozilla.org).
The Mac OS X operating environment comes with the
Apple Mail
applica-
tion included. Apple Mail can access e-mail using POP or IMAP. Beyond
e-mailitintegrateswithotherAppleapplicationssuchas
Address Book
,
iChat
and
iCal
.
Microsoft Office for Mac OS X, includes a mail application called
Entourage
, which is intended to be similar in function to Outlook on
Windows.Italsoincludessomecalendar,addressbookandorganizationfunc-
tions. It has some integration with Microsoft Exchange, but not quite to the
level of Outlook on the Windows platform.
In Linux there are many choices; among them
Evolution
and
Kmail
as
well as the
Mozilla
applications.
Evolution
has e-mail, address book
and calendar functions.and is designed to be similar to Microsoft Office
