Outlook 98 Integration Sucks!
For the past few months Microsoft has been selling its corporate e-mail client with an inconspicuous string attached. Microsoft outlook requires the installation of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 4 browser. While this is not a big deal to home users, corporate users are really pissed off about this, to put it mildly. "I don't get it, IE 4 already has an e-mail client and Outlook 97 didn't need any stupid browser at all." said one irate system administrator while banging his head against the wall.
The reason for this bundling is simple. Microsoft is trying to drive Netscape and all other companies out of the browser business. Companies are not as likely to upgrade to Windows 98, Microsoft's bug fix to Windows 95 that is illegally bundled with IE 4. To fill this gap, Microsoft took Outlook 97 and IE 4, created an Outlook summary page that requires IE 4 and packaged it as Outlook 98.
As it is, Outlook 98 when started is an independent application, but when the user clicks on the "Outlook Today" icon, Outlook 98 starts IE 4 and displays a summary of received e-mail and scheduled tasks. IE 4 also kicks in when an HTML message is viewed.
Because nobody in charge seems to care, this illegal bundling is most
likely to continue. Forcing the installation of IE 4 is an effective deterrent
to using non-microsoft browses, that so far as been effective. "We will
own the world", said Bill Gates.
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