Outlook Social Connector Gets Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn

Gryesc1: Who uses Outlook? Well, I do. Extensively. Hands down it is the most used program on my PC. It is my primary workflow and communciation tool for me and for at least 1500 other people in my place of business. Just because you don't use it doesn't mean this isn't interesting to the rest of the world.

"gfryesc1 said: who uses Outlook? It's just not that interesting, sorry. " I do, it's my favorite program, and I love the Office 2010 version.

Some people live in caves and don't know who uses Outlook. I wonder if Google is sponsering Internet access for those kind of people. But I must say the connector crashed my Outlook 2010 beta. I just hope it is not a universal problem. Dhaval

Installed, and now Outlook 2010 crashes on start up ... wonderful.

FYI: Install Fails on Outlook 2010 x64 RC. Too bad.

Here is the rub. Outlook is a corporate app for 99% of people. No corporation that wants to be secure and wants to restrict users from spending all day on crap like facebook will ever allow this. Exchange webmail in 2007 and now 2010 is so good now that 80% of our users lost Outlook last year. Basically all terminal server and VDI users. All of our Macs are ditching Entourage when we upgrade them to SL. Outlook sucks at IMAP.

Outlook is a great piece of software. I don't understand why Paul calls it a "bloated piece of junk".

"Gmail sucks on a browser" ???? Its different, the lack of folders and its conversation view, but if you take the time to learn it, its 100% more efficient and blazing fast. Gmail/webmail has the best search and Antispam features available. I cant imagine using a fat client for my personal email. Outlook is great at work, but 85% of its features are useless if you are not connecting to an Exchange server.

It seems odd that Microsoft would build a feature like this for Outlook as opposed to Windows Live Mail or something. I don't see busineses adopting social networking features (with all the inherent privacy concerns,) and Outlook is far too bloated and complicated for the average home user. I tried mightly to use Outlook at home for a very long time, but finally gave up and switched to Thunderbird on my main desktop (though I still--occasionally--run Outlook on my laptop. --------------- Sorry, I couldn't let this one go... rr0de74@live.com said: "Besides not running some Windows only apps (two way street really), what cant OS X do that Windows can do?" Play Blu-ray movies, for starters. Or record CableCARD broadcasts. Or let you buy and download movies and TV shows from someone other than iTunes.

"Play Blu-ray movies, for starters. Or record CableCARD broadcasts. Or let you buy and download movies and TV shows from someone other than iTunes." And we can follow... Playing 90% of games on the market is not possible in OSX... using 99% the hardware on the market is not possible in OSX... Customizing the UI is not possible in OSX... Some one cane continue?

I have been lurking around here for a while and... It sure doesn't seem like you have iLife installed out of the box, rr0de.

My original response was to this.... "and I won't over pay for Apple crap, especially considering it doesn't work with 90+% of the rest of the computing industry." Which is simply not true or not even being close to true. At the time I was thinking more business and not consumer at the time because of the rest of his post. I will admit ( i just searched) that you CANT play a BR movie on a Mac, so I am wrong. I have never tried to play a BR movie on any computer, and I dont know anyone that does. I am sure there are people that do it, but I have never seen anyone. I own 2-PS3's and hardly watch BR movies on them, as its cheaper and easy to stream Netflix or rent DVD's as this point in time. You can connect a BR drive to a Mac for storage and there is software that supports that. iLife comes installed on EVERY new Mac...out of the box. If you wipe the Mac and use the DVD that comes with it to re-install, it installs iLife. OS X has a mail/calendar/address book software out of the box, does Windows 7? Can you create an ISO file, or view or save to a PDF with Windows 7 out of the box? Can you mount a Mac formatted volume on a Windows PC out of the box? 90% of PC games dont play on a Mac. Probably. 90% of gamers today dont game on a computer. Paul said it and I agree PC/Mac gaming is niche and basically dead from a revenue/market share standpoint. I game, on a PS3, I used to own a 360 before it dies for the 4th time outside of the 3year window. Everyone I know that plays games does it on a console and have done so for at least 3 years most 5 or more. So are there things a Windows PC can do that a Mac cant do and vice versa. In most cases there is a solution, but not in some (BR playing). However 90+% of what you can do on a PC can be done on a Mac and vice versa. "The cloud" closes that game everyday. Why buy or rent a HD movie if you can stream it. If Netflix had their entire DVD collection online, I would never want another DVD in the mail.

GoodThings2Life said: "Yeah, add me to the list of IT professionals that will absolutely Group Policy this functionality and the Outlook 2010 "People Pane" into oblivion... this is great for home users, but not professionals, and Outlook is a professional app not a home app." My thoughts exactly. Seems like an odd choice to me. Will Outlook be included in the "Home and Student" version of Office 2010, or whatever it will be called? That's the only way it remotely makes sense to me.

Actually gents, a Mac Pro Tower can play Blu-ray, and write discs using Toast. You can buy the hardware here: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/LG/BH08LS20MP/

From that link.... "At this time Commercial Blue-ray movie playback not supported in OS X." UnnDunn is correct. BR requires a full DRM solution. All devices must support BR. So your TV and player must both support the DRM (most with HDMI do) or the BR resolution will be dropped down or not play at all. OS X has not included (bought from Sony) the BR DRM licenses. Apple has stated that they are waiting to see if BR on a computer will be mainstream. IMHO its not right now. Its a total niche and used on a computers to distinguish a PC with better specs most of the time in a sea of similarity among many PC's

Of course Win7 doesn't come out of the box with any of this... What you call value and features is worth an antitrust case on the other side of the fence. Hypocrisy is a bitch these days.

It did show this in the first note of the MS DL page: "The Outlook Social Connector included in the Office 2010 Beta is not compatible with the providers currently available online. Office 2010 Beta users must install the Outlook Social Connector 32-bit Beta in order to successfully use the social network providers currently available. Also, you cannot install the 32-bit OSC Beta on Outlook 2010 Beta 64-bit or Office 2010 Home & Business Beta."

@webguy3000 Will Outlook be included in the "Home and Student" version of Office 2010, or whatever it will be called? That's the only way it remotely makes sense to me. Outlook will be included in Office 2010 Home and Business version when released.

I agree with GoodThings2Life comments. There is no way that corporations, businesses want that thing clogging up Outlook.

@DRWAM I picked up the same LCD over the holidays from NewEgg, its very nice. It does take a while to wake up and that is my only complaint. I tested on a PC and I use it daily with a unibody Macbook, both take a while to wake up. I have not used it as a TV, but I have jacked a PS3 into it at a PS3 LAN party and it worked great for 14 hours straight.

Yeah the 260 is 25.something inches. I was torn between the two but the 260 was almost $100 and the resolution 1900x1200 is the same as the 240. I think the 260 has a cablecard slot if your cable provider supports them.

I like the 240 as I can display two windows side by side very nicely, instead of putting two 20in in portrait mode together. It saves space and looks neater, if that is an acceptable term. Or you can stretch Outlook or Entourage and show details of each window. I have Outlook on Vista on my Pro Tower.

Outlook is used by people who have no idea. They simply have no taste.

While I would argue against the downloading of HD movies to be bad depends on how they compress the data yeah streaming sucks compared to blue-ray because if they didin't compress it even with our faster speeds of today it would take quite a bit of buffering to watch a full HD movie.

redunion, I have Outlook and Entourage [for the Mac] set up the it gets my Gmail, Exchange, and all 4 Comcast accounts. [ I had 1 account and a dummy email account for junk, then the user name I wanted became available for account #3, then my company took over paying for my internet account but started yet another account, for a total of 4. I really only use two of them now, but was intending on switching to Gmail. Gmail works well on Entourage, but I just do not like the browser UI.]