I have a dilemma, and I don't know what to do. A couple years ago I left Company A to work for Company B (which is a good deal larger than A), and now I have returned back to Company A. A's email infrastructure is based on an in-house linux IMAP server. Part of this is because it's been that way since the company began roughly 7 years ago, and partly because we have an internal VB6 app that connects to the mail server via POP3.

While I was at Company B, they used Exchange and I became accustomed to having Outlook as the center of my activities - I would use the tasks and calendaring a lot to keep track of what I needed to do. I still try and use and push open-source and free applications when I can, but the company standard was Outlook and I got used to it.

Fast forward to me returning to Company A. Like I said, their main email is an IMAP server. They do have SBS 2003 running with Exchange, but it's not really used. The Tech Admin installed the server, and wants to push to using Exchange exclusively, but the Applications Manager says it can't fully go over to that because the VB6 app uses POP3 to connect to the mail server. I think you can connect to Exchange via a POP3 connector, but I'm not sure. That would be great it that would work, though.

Anyway, doing my best to minimize my dependence on Office, I installed Thunderbird, which I've used a lot in the past to work with IMAP. I really think it has the best IMAP email handling out there, and for email and email only, I think it's great.

But I'm running into problems with "organizing" my life. I'm trying Thunderbird with Lightning, the calendaring extension, and it sort of works, but just isn't there yet. I've scheduled events, and they show up in the corner, but there is no reminder when they happen. Lightning's interface to schedule events is garbage. I created some tasks, "ToDo" items, and after I marked them completed they didn't disappear. I haven't seen a way that it differentiates items, even if their priorities are different. All in all it feels very rough.

So next I'm trying out Outlook 2007's trial. I love the Outlook interface. The management of tasks and appointments works well for me. I just hate the email implementation. Outlook's IMAP support sucks, to put it nicely. It is clumsy and awkward. Not to mention having to dig through a billion layers of menus to customize everything the way I want it. Plus, because there is also an Exchange server, it gets confused and shows/uses the Exchange info instead of the IMAP server sometimes.

So I'm not sure what to do. I even tried the win32 version of Evolution - that was bad, too. It felt awkward and clumsy - a sorry implementation of Outlook and a far lower email client than Thunderbird. I could probably find a standalone calendaring/task list app, but that would mean having two apps open always. I've always got email up - the rest should be a part of that.

So I don't know what to do. Do I put up with Outlook's email inadequacies for it's personal management qualities? Do I stick with Thunderbird's IMAP greatness and try and force Lightning to work? Do I just stick with a paper calendar and datebook? Sigh......why can't Microsoft get IMAP right?? Or Google - offer your gmail and calendar system as a server software we can install on our own!