The Integration of IE and Outlook

[James]

Lately (for about two weeks now) I've been using IE9 and Outlook (not Express but the "big boy") from my copy of Office 2010. I have to admit to two things that have surprised me. First off... I love the way that IE renders pages. That's not to say that Firefox renders them poorly (it doesn't) but there's just a certain clean look to an IE rendered page that has surprised me. Secondly, I love the integration of the mail component meant to work hand in hand with the browser. And there is no question that Outlook is the penultimate in email clients. It has far more to offer than I will ever need but I have found myself digging more deeply into some of its options and making use of them. The idea that I cannot skin either program really hasn't bothered me and I thought it would. I like the basic default look which suits my purposes just fine without the fluff that skins and personnas bring to the table.

Anyway...I'm not trying to convince anyone to go this way and In fact knowing me, I'm not sure I'll remain with this combo. But for now it's proven an interesting and enjoyable divergence. Oh... and I dropped Lastpass on IE and instead activated my Norton 360's identity safe which also works beautifully with IE and Outlook.

AS an aside: I have not been bothered by the introduction of ads to the pages I visit with the only exception being the flash ads that I find distracting. I've felt somewhat guilty for crushing all ads here and elsewhere for some time now using ad block plus on FF. When I do return to FF I will make certain to enact the exceptions to the blocking rule or to simply disable the add-on altogether.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/5.0; BOIE9;ENUSMSE)

[Amrad]

Hello James,

But for now it's proven an interesting and enjoyable divergence.

I think you meant diversion, didn't you?

Regards,

Dave.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:14.0) Gecko/20120715 Firefox/14.0.1 SeaMonkey/2.11

[Antony]

For some unknown reason, I tend to use IE whenever I am using Windows (under Parallels), even though I do have Safari or Firefox installed on the virtual machine. IE is not that bad actually.

As for email. My main email application is the default Mail.app from OS X. Currently, shifting less-frequent and less-important email accounts to Thunderbird. I am still trying to get used to Thunderbird's style.

Oh, I am old fashioned. I preferred POP3 and I do have a few accounts that are installed on multiple machines (including my iPhones and iPads). This means that some emails could be downloaded multiple times among different devices. I know I am old schooled.
I know I could make my life easier with IMAP email, apart from the iCloud email, I don't use IMAP setting much.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.8; rv:14.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/14.0.1 AlexaToolbar/alxf-2.15

[James]

I'm using IMAP for my ISP's account and my Outlook (ie Hotmail) account by way of the Outlook connector. It's a good way to read my webmail on the Outlook client (instead of on the web) where all my mail is in one location. Antony, you're so old fashioned!

Dave: nice catch.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 5_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B206 Safari/7534.48.3