Evolution for Windows port challenger to Microsoft Outlook?

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 06 March 2007 11:39

Opinion and Analysis

Evolution for Windows exists, it's easy to install and it works! No sooner had the ink dried on an article I had penned bemoaning the fact that OpenOffice.org on the Windows platform does not include an equivalent to Microsoft's Outlook, when a poster pointed me to a very exciting non-project.

To recap, I am quite happy with OpenOffice.org, which I have installed on my new laptop - except for one thing. The package does not provide an equivalent open source desktop email and calendaring client to Microsoft's Outlook. Like many business users, I use Outlook at least as much as Word and far more than Excel and Powerpoint.

I pointed out that Evolution, an open source package similar to Outlook is available on Linux but is nothing like it is available on Windows. Why, I asked, isn't anyone working on an Evolution port to Windows?

Actually there is an official project overseen by the Gnome crowd  that provides a list of zipfiles which together contain a beta quality release of Evolution for Windows. However, you would have to be or employ a geek to get it installed.

However, as a slightly irate poster pointed out to me, there is in fact an easy Evolution port for the rest of us that uses the Windows installer. You can find out all about it at this site.

In a nutshell, a guy working at a Linux site decided to make it easy for employees of his company to schedule appointments with customers who use Outlook without having to spend thousands on copies of Outlook.

I have downloaded and installed a copy of Evolution from the site and it works. However, be aware that it is a beta so don't expect it to be perfect. That said I tested it out by sending appointment requests from a laptop Evolution email account to a different desktop Outlook email account and the other way. I successfully, accepted and declined invitations to meetings and was able to do all the things I usually do using Outlook.

It hasn't been rigorously tested but this is definitely a project worth looking at!