And we like it that way. In the new job, though, we’ll have to at least be aware of it even if we don’t use it, so in order to facilitate some user migrations, we spooled up a virtual XP box and installed Outlook 2007.

Holy. Crap. This thing is totally broken. Here’s two bits we’ve run into right away:

• First, if you go through the setup and elect to create an Exchange account, but get it wrong, you’re in a dead end — Outlook will really, really want to connect to the Exchange server, and if it can’t for whatever reason, it’s going to fall over. We couldn’t find any config files or Outlook folders in our home directory to zap and start over, so we asked the tech. Turns out, to make Outlook ‘start over’, you need to go into the frigging Control Panel, to the Mail option, and delete the bolloxed profile. Then you can start over.

• It gets better. If, later, after getting Outlook running without an Exchange account configured, you decide you want to try to add one, you can’t — at least not from inside Outlook. Exchange accounts have to be added through the self-same Control Panel -> Mail -> Profiles mechanism we mentioned above.

Who thought this was a good idea? Is someone at Microsoft just trying to create absurdist, unfriendly, unintuitive, totally b0rked interfaces comprised entirely of Fail? We understand they want to tie everything to Windows so it’s impossible to switch, but come ON, people, the whole rest of the universe understands that a mail program is just a mail program, not something that should need to be managed from our operating system’s byzantine configuration tools. Sheesh.

This is an excellent example of why open tools are better, by the way. With an open tool — not just open source, but any software designed to be flexible and friendly to the user — you can use it while following your own software plan. With a closed, locked-up tool like Outlook, you’re definitely being coerced into following Microsoft’s business plan, which is probably not yours.