Microsoft
MicrosoftIt is impossible to beat Outlook Classic in terms of features and usability. It was written and evolved over 25 years to compete with hundreds of competitors. It became the best and won the market. Now, there is no competition left, so they can kill it. And what ya gonna do?
Thank God for Thunderbird. It may not be as good as Outlook Classic (not even close IMO), but it is very good.
I agree with you that Classic Outlook is the best. My MS 365 subscription is paid for another ten months, so I'll continue with Classic and see what's going on then.
Another option...
Buy Office Standard 2024. It can be found on sale for < $50. I saw it on Groupon, just now, for $35. It is a lifetime license and includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote.
I felt like a fool for paying $8 per month, every month, forever and never actually owning it when I discovered this last year. (I just looked - it's $10/month now 😞)
Plus, Outlook Classic won't ever just disappear from your PC via a M365 monthly "upgrade".
I have a few months left on my subscription for 365 so this really piqued my interest. I'm still running Classic Outlook and want to keep that capability so if I were to buy the Office Standard and cancel my subscription do I have to uninstall 365 prior to loading Office Standard? And will I keep my Classic Outlook? And I assume all my Word and Excel files will still be there-right? Needless to say, I really appreciate the input from you guys!
I don't know for 100% certain that you need to uninstall Office 365 prior to installing Office LTSC, but you probably need to. I would uninstall/reinstall to be sure it is installed properly. There is no reason not to.
I think Office 2024 only comes with Outlook "Classic". So, no worries there.
None of your Office files should be lost. Make sure you have a good backup just in case it goes sideways. Well, maybe if they are stored in OneDrive.
They only real downside is that O365 includes 1TB of OneDrive space. That will go back down to whatever is "free" (15GB ?). I don't what happens to your data when the subscription expires.
They used to offer affordable OneDrive-only plans ($20/yr for 1TB), but they stopped. No worries though. You can buy a 4TB USB3 drive for ~ $120, and this puts you back in control of your data.
Yeah, I thought of doing that. But Costco adds three months if you buy a one-year family subscription, plus they give a $10 rebate. I also want get used to using their AI stuff, so getting updates made some sense to me. I have mixed feelings about using AI, but it's not going away, so I want to learn about its pros and cons.
