Outlook Newsgroups

D

Dennis Delorme

Question?
Why has Outlook (not Express) always asked in the past if it would like
to be the Default News Reader, I believe it has never been able to do
this function.
Why is it that you have to go to a lower type email program to read
Newsgroups? I will never use Express and would love to remove it from my
system. I currenty use Mozilla Thunderbird to read Newsgroups.
Does anyone know why Micrsoft refuses to add Newsgroup options to their
full Outlook program?

Thanks
 
C

Chuck Davis

-----Original Message-----
Question?
Why has Outlook (not Express) always asked in the past if it would like
to be the Default News Reader, I believe it has never been able to do
this function.
Why is it that you have to go to a lower type email program to read
Newsgroups? I will never use Express and would love to remove it from my
system. I currenty use Mozilla Thunderbird to read Newsgroups.
Does anyone know why Micrsoft refuses to add Newsgroup options to their
full Outlook program?

Thanks
.
The folks here are not Microsoft employees, so your
suggestion here is for naught. Try:
http://register.microsoft.com/mswish/suggestion.asp
 
B

Brian Tillman

Dennis Delorme said:
Why has Outlook (not Express) always asked in the past if it would
like to be the Default News Reader, I believe it has never been able
to do this function.

By asking this question and receiving an answer, Outlook was able to
determine whether or not it should register Outlook Express utilizing the
/outnews switch, which reskins Outlook Express as the "Microsoft Outlook
Newsreader".
Why is it that you have to go to a lower type email program to read
Newsgroups?

I don't consider OE to be a "lower" email program. In fact, in many
respects, it's better than Outlook at some things. IMAP account handling
comes to mind.
I will never use Express and would love to remove it from
my system.

Of course, if you did, Outlook would cease to function, since it utilizes
some of the DLLs contained in Outlook Express for some of its underlying
tasks.
I currenty use Mozilla Thunderbird to read Newsgroups.
Does anyone know why Micrsoft refuses to add Newsgroup options to
their full Outlook program?

While I don't know, I can speculate. Outlook is a business environment
application. Many companies simply don't want to make it any easier for
their employees to spend time online when they should be spending time
making money for the company. Of course, I see the illogic of this, since
any PC with Outlook installed also had OE, which can read news and if
there's no newsfeed to tap, it wouldn't matter if Outlook could read news.

Another theory is that Outlook is bloated enough as it is. Adding
functionality outside the scope of the application's main focus adds to that
bloat and introduces side effects that could affect or detract from the main
focus.

Additionally, there's the idea that managers at Microsoft may have said
something to the effect of, "We already have a product that reads news. Do
we really need to add that ability to another product? Wouldn't it be more
cost-effective to make the product better at what it already does?"

Finally, Exchange can host newsgroups within public folders, giving Outlook
clients the ability to read news that way and there already exist
third-party Outlook add-ins that enable NNTP in Outlook. Microsoft already
owns the desktop where Outlook is installed. They have no problem sharing
such an insignificant portion with other vendors. Besides, they can use it
to say, "See, we're not really a monopoly."
 

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