#What does outlook cost windows 8#

Mozilla Thunderbird is flaky and fugly, and has the same annoying mark-as-read issue as most other clients.

#What does outlook cost windows 8#

is not the answer, and neither is Microsoft's anemic Windows 8 Mail app. But I won't pay $110 to get it, nor will I pay $69 per year for Office 365 - not when the other 85 percent of the suite holds no value for me. It's the perfect mail client for someone like me. I've tried tons of them, and found just two that afford this configuration: eM Client (which has proven maddeningly buggy of late) and - wait for it - Outlook. But you'd be amazed how few mail clients work this way.

A message is 'read' when I reply to or forward it. Most important of all, and this may sound minor, I don't want a program that automatically marks a message as read after I click it or a certain amount of time has passed.

With Inbox, Google dares to be different.

Google unveils Gmail alternative: 'Inbox'.

Microsoft makes new plans for Office 365 users.

rolls out advanced email rules, in-line replies.

Microsoft buys mobile email startup Acompli.

I also insist on an 'unread' view that shows just my unread messages - across all my accounts, not just one of them. And call me a traditionalist, but my preferred layout is a simple inbox pane on the left and a preview pane on the right. No, for multiple accounts, nothing beats a desktop mail client. Can I deal with all of them in a browser? Sure, but it's a huge hassle: Google, maddeningly, offers no unified-inbox option, no way to sign into or view all your accounts in a single tab. I have three with Gmail and another from a domain tied to a small business. So why am I bothering? Like a lot of people, I need to manage multiple accounts. Same goes for e-mail, and in fact some would argue that there's little point in bothering with a 'local' (i.e., desktop) mail client at all. Most folks manage their contacts and calendar on their phones, syncing everything to a cloud destination.

To say things are different now is a major understatement. A program like Outlook was the desktop side of the PDA, the big-screen manager of contacts, appointments, and to-do lists. That coincided with the rise of the PalmPilot and other PDAs, and back then there was a thriving market for personal information managers (PIMs). The program debuted in 1997 as part of Microsoft's Office 97 suite. But here's the thing: I don't want Office 365. Maybe it's to thoroughly discourage anyone from buying it, in hopes that customers will instead opt for an Office 365 subscription. What I don't understand is why Microsoft charges $109.99 for a single license. As desktop mail clients go, I think Outlook 2013 is the best option out there, and certainly the best version of the program Microsoft has ever produced.