Outlook Express for Win 7 and 8?

[Jo-Anne]

Has anyone heard of this? Used it?

http://runasxp.com/Forum-Outlook-Express-6-for-Windows-7-8

I happened to see the mention in the Windows 7 General newsgroup today
when someone asked about what to use when he migrated from XP with OE to
Win 7.

Thank you,

Jo-Anne

[VanguardLH]

The site says "Outlook Express , one of most used email client
worldwide, discontinued after windows xp, ...". Wrong!

The version of Windows had nothing to do with the discontinued support
and distribution of Outlook Express. It was discontinuing the BUNDLING
of OE with IE. Microsoft had discontinued support for OE for many
years. As of Internet Explorer 7 is when Microsoft stopped bundling OE
with IE. So, to be correct, "Outlook Express, a well used e-mail
client, was discontinued starting with Internet Explorer 7". Windows XP
came with a base version of IE6 and why you got OE in XP. If Windows XP
had come with a base version of IE7, or later, then you would not have
had OE under XP.

If you have a non-Home edition of Windows 7 then you get to use its XP
Mode which has Windows XP running inside a virtual machine. That is,
with non-Home editions of 7, you got a license to run XP under 7. You
did not mention which edition of Windows 7 that you use. XP Mode is not
available in any Windows version before or after 7, so it's not
available in Windows 8.

Besides lying about why OE was discontinued (claiming it was an OS
version issue), do you really want an unknown program from a forum site?
I have to wonder if they are proffering someone else's software as their
own, like their download is for OE Classic (very flaky, and lureware
which means the free version is crippled [very much crippled, in this
case] to draw you to their $25 payware version). A forum may host a
program for its download but forums don't write software unless they are
fake forums to promote their own product. In fact, all their other
downloads are software from other authors. So this site pretends to
offer their software which is, in fact, someone else's software.

Outlook Express was never available as a separate download or as a
separate installation. It has always come bundled with Internet
Explorer. So whatever they are offering you is not the OE from
Microsoft and it is also not their own software alternative (but they
don't tell you whose software they'll download to you).

To get their "secret brand" of OE software, you must provide them with a
working e-mail account. So I used an alias (that will be killed
immediately after the download has completed and after I get their
confirmation e-mail to click on a link to complete registering a new
account with them). VirusTotal.com didn't find any malware in their
downloaded .exe file; however, the installer is compressed and itself
may not be malware. I wasn't about to install unknown software whose
author is unknown proffered by a forum site that doesn't write the
software it promotes as its own without crediting the real authors of
the software.

From what little they do admit, it looks like what they may offer is a
patched version of OE. They extracted it from some IE bundle (probably
IE6 since that was the last version in which OE was bundled and why the
last version is OE6). Discontinuing a product does relinquish ownership
of the product. Microsoft stopped distributing OE but that doesn't mean
they lost ownership of it. So someone hacked/cracked a copy of
Microsoft's software and is pushing it out as their own.

https://sites.google.com/site/simpledotnet/outlook-express-6

You'll see they use the Detours program to intercept system calls to
make the program call the DLLs supplied with it instead of the much
newer and incompatible later version of DLLs in later version of
Windows. The problem is that the author of this solution is stealing
software from Microsoft. He doesn't claim it is his software. He notes
that it is a *copy* of Outlook Express (that he somehow extracted from
IE's installer since OE always came bundled with IE).

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/detours/

You have to PAY for Detours Pro. So they must've used the free Detours
Express product with their illegally debundled copy of OE. If you read
that page, Detours Express can only be used for non-commercial and
non-production deployments. So this hacked copy of OE using Detours
Express is only for personal use (which is probably how you intend to
use their setup).

Use of Detours Express is okay for personal use. I suspect them
redistributing Outlook Express - which is still owned by Microsoft - is
not legit. Typically an MS EULA bans hacking their software, debundling
it, or distributing it separately of the parent product.

http://www.cs.uah.edu/~delugach/Courses/H399-01/EULA.htm

That's for OE5 (couldn't find a copy of OE6's EULA). Of importance are
the statements:

Distribution. You may not distribute copies of the SOFTWARE PRODUCT to
third parties.

That is what this forum and the OE6 project author are doing. They are
taking a Microsoft product, not their own, and using Detours to overcome
some limitations. Detours is used with YOUR software or software whose
licensing allows you to redistribute it. Microsoft's license lets you
use the software that came from them. It does not permit someone other
than Microsoft to distribute that Microsoft program.

Prohibition on Reverse Engineering, Decompilation, and Disassembly.
You may not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the SOFTWARE
PRODUCT, except and only to the extent that such activity is expressly
permitted by applicable law notwithstanding this limitation.

I don't know if using Detours is all that is needed to make the
encapsulated instance of OE6 call methods (functions) a specific list of
included DLLs or if the author modified the OE code. Detours looks to
provide an alternate set of libraries (functions) so the program has to
be modified to make use of Detours. That violates the above condition
in the MS license. If YOU downloaded IE6 from Microsoft (if you could
find it anymore) and they gave instructions on how to use Detours
without modifying the .exe or .dll or other program files for OE to make
it run in any version of Windows then they'd have a legal solution.

From one site, "Detours is a library for instrumenting arbitrary Win32
functions Windows-compatible processors. Detours intercepts Win32
functions by re-writing the in-memory code for target functions." So it
may be possible to not modify msimn.exe (the executable for OE) in using
Detours to redirect DLL method calls to the DLLs of your choice.
However, extracting OE from the IE bundle and someone other than
Microsoft distributing the code violates the Microsoft license. There's
a lot of this "if I don't get caught then it's okay" attitude, like
stealing pens from the supply cabinet at work to dole out to your kids
when school starts. No, the Microsoft Police won't show up at your door
if you use this solution. Is the expectation of no penalty for
violating an agreement your criteria for defining your morality? Sure
could get away with a LOT of nasty behavior using that rationalization.

[Jo-Anne]

Thank you for your comprehensive response, VanguardLH! I thought the OE
"new" program sounded strange.

I'm about to buy a Windows 7 business computer from Dell (I was going to
do it today but discovered that the sales department is closed on
Sundays). In preparation, a few months ago I switched from Outlook
Express to Thunderbird. I wish OE could have been continued. It's far
more sophisticated in most areas than Thunderbird. Many times I look for
a feature and it's not there in Tbird or I have to download an add-on
for it.

I'd be happy to pay for a good email program, but I haven't heard of
anything that sounds good. Any suggestions?

Thank you again,

Jo-Anne

[VanguardLH]

Jo-Anne wrote:

> I'm about to buy a Windows 7 business computer from Dell (I was going to
> do it today but discovered that the sales department is closed on
> Sundays). In preparation, a few months ago I switched from Outlook
> Express to Thunderbird. I wish OE could have been continued. It's far
> more sophisticated in most areas than Thunderbird. Many times I look for
> a feature and it's not there in Tbird or I have to download an add-on
> for it.

If you are buying a "business" computer then perhaps you are getting a
"business" grade version of Windows. That is, if you are NOT getting
the Home edition of Windows 7 (i.e., you're getting Pro edtion, or
higher) then you have XP Mode available to you. This requires 2
downloads from Microsoft: one is the updated VirtualPC VMM (virtual
machine manager) renamed to Windows VirtualPC (WVPC), and the other is
the virtual machine image (a .vhd file you have the VMM load). This
runs WVPC on Windows 7. Inside of WVPC, you have it load the VHD image
(which is Windows XP). You now have Windows XP running as a guest OS in
a virtual machine under Windows 7.

Windows XP comes initially with Internet Explorer 6. Since that was the
last version of IE in which OE was bundled, you will get OE6 inside the
Windows XP virtual machine. The way Microsoft setup WVPC is to make the
apps running in the virtual machine look transparent. That is, they try
to make them appear as though they are apps running under Windows 7
(which they are but inside a virtual machine running on Windows 7). It
was a good try but you can still see the separate list of virtualized
apps running under Windows XP from those that run native in Windows 7.

So, if you get Windows 7 Pro, or better, then you can use XP Mode to
continue using OE. You will have to lookup how to migrate your .dbx and
account settings in the registry from your current XP host to the
virtual XP host. The OE newsgroup might help with that. That's only
needed if you used POP3 accounts in OE. If you use IMAP accounts (in
any e-mail client), it stays in sync with what is on the e-mail server.
The server is your cloned backup: whenever you install any e-mail client
and connect it to the same IMAP account then you immediately see the
same set of e-mails you saw in a prior e-mail client that also used
IMAP. The only things you would have to define in the OE running inside
the XP virtual machine on Windows 7 are the accounts (not difficult if
you only have 1 or a couple e-mail accounts) and any tweakings of OE's
configuration.

So decide now what edition of Windows 7 you will put on that "business"
laptop. Remember anything that is virtualized will run slower because
all hardware (except the CPU) is virtualized. Hardware emulated in
software will always be far slower than using real hardware. You might
not notice the virtualized instance of OE is that much slower when using
it but t will take longer to load.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/features/windows-xp-mode
(Ignore the warning. Just Microsoft trying to sell later versions.)

>
> I'd be happy to pay for a good email program, but I haven't heard of
> anything that sounds good. Any suggestions?
>
> Thank you again,
>
> Jo-Anne

For free e-mail clients, there isn't any more powerful than Thunderbird.
I used it for 6 months before going back to MS Outlook. I'm sure if you
asked in Mozilla's Thunderbird support newsgroup that you would find
Thunderbird could do many things you just didn't know how to find by
yourself.

NNTP server: news.mozilla.org (port 119)
Newsgroup: mozilla.support.thunderbird

I went back to Thunderbird because it was too flaky (much more so than
Outlook), had no where near the same rules set (Outlook is robust,
Thunderbird is weak), too many add-ons were needed to get it to have
features in Outlook. Thunderbird is free but I already had very cheap
legit copies of MS Office 2010 and then I got MS Office 2013 for free
(as an OEM license on a broken computer given to me that I managed to
repair). If I had to buy Outlook with my own money, I'd probably still
be using Thunderbird and suffer with its bugs (some of which are very
ancient) and a few add-ons (since many go dead with subsequent versions
of Thunderbird so you need to install only the actively supported ones -
and patching the .xsi, or whatever filetype it is, to edit which
versions of TB that an add-on will support does not make the add-on
necessarily support later versions of TB). The whole add-on arena is a
mess.

Mozilla is supposed to review add-ons before showing them on their
add-on web site but reviews must be very lax. Plus they don't compile a
table of which add-ons are incompatible with each other or which ones
duplicate features in another add-on. They claim there is control but I
really don't see much supervision over add-ons. A lot of them are dead,
won't work in later versions of TB, or have been abandoned and yet
Mozilla keeps listing them.

[Jo-Anne]

Thank you very much for your detailed response, Vanguard! I just ordered
the computer, with Win7 Pro, so I'm allowed to use XP mode. I had hoped
it would come already installed, but it won't, so I'll use your link to
download what I need. I probably won't go back to OE, even with XP mode.
I will probably need XP, though, for a couple ancient programs that
might not run under Win7.

I agree that Thunderbird is buggy; it's also very limited. The only
better thing (than in OE) about it is printing. Having print preview and
the ability to change the font size in printing is enormously helpful.
It was my one real complaint about OE. I think I have to use an add-on
to get it, but it's a very good one (unlike print preview and printing
in general in Firefox, which is awful).

My version of Office is a student version, so it doesn't include
Outlook. I should look into that, though, to see if it's worth having.
It's a pity Microsoft stopped supporting OE...

Thank you again,

Jo-Anne

[footb...@gmail.com]

I can't believe MS left us out in the cold. I get mail OK using 'gmail'. I lost my subscription to 'Usenet NewsGroups' (east.Sonic-News.com) which is very important to me. Mozilla Thunderbird will not bring up my News Groups. I plan to ditch this Dell Win 7 piece of junk and get an XP laptop. I had no problems ever with XP but this Wins 7 machine is a paperweight.

[footb...@gmail.com]

Dell Home Pro

[Live]

<footb...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:976650ad-f40b-4806...@googlegroups.com...

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http://www.p-u.demon.nl/oe6_1.6.7.exe

[Isaac Wright]

> http://www.p-u.demon.nl/oe6_1.6.7.exe
Doesn't work in 2023! Need new link!

[Isaac Wright]

Hurry up and post new link!