I'm growing leery of google all up in my biz. i don't love the new interface. I don't use google docs for anything serious like school because i don't want google to suck it up for evil or have it show up in search on the web someday.

So i'm looking at alternatives. I'm particularly looking at outlook.com and even office365.com. I don't fully understand the difference between the two. office365 costs money and can give you local Office licenses for what seems like a good deal. outlook.com has free "office online". I like the idea of MS online apps since they'll tie directly into my local office work and i think MS would be reasonable with regards to privacy.

I read the arstechnica article on running your own email server but quickly dismissed that idea.

I do have hosting through 1and1 and will soon merge with my fiancee's hosting at bluehost. so i could just use bluehost webmail, but it doesn't offer any office-type applications and is fairly basic.

noen, sell me on what MS is offering.

2/21/2014 9:14:00 AM

With outlook.com you can use your existing email with your own username to login, you don't need a .outlook email if you don't want it. And, unlike gmail, it doesn't cost money to do that (although I'm sure you were grandfathered at gmail and aren't paying for it there either).

outlook.com is basically a live account, and you can even use it to login on Windows 8. The benefits extend beyond email, using a live account to login to windows 8 will allow you to easily save settings and installed apps so moving to a different computer is a breeze. its also tied to onedrive (previously called skydrive) which is the best cloud-based storage option currently available.

Office365 is a little bit different, its the full office suite that you can install on devices or run virtually without any install required. The office that comes with outlook used to be called office web apps and uses a browser-based interface. For regular use you probably want office 365, for occasional use the online browser based ones are fine. The browser-based Office that come with outlook.com (with your live account) are good for quickly editing things saved on onedrive or from an email, but its not a full office replacement.

2/21/2014 9:23:43 AM

So to attempt to avoid privacy issues, you're going to Microsoft?

Heh, alright.

2/21/2014 9:37:49 AM

well its no secret that google's business model IS mining your data and selling it to targeted advertisers

[Edited on February 21, 2014 at 9:48 AM. Reason : .]

2/21/2014 9:46:44 AM

Quote :

"i think MS would be reasonable with regards to privacy"

lol, no dude.
hushmail, lavabit, silent circle. however, you aren't getting gov't privacy anymore

2/21/2014 10:08:57 AM

outlook.com is still scanning your email (to filter spam and malware), they just aren't using it to offer targeted ads. it's a slightly better privacy policy, but if you really have sensitive stuff none of the major services (gmail, outlook, yahoo) will serve your needs.

2/21/2014 10:18:41 AM

I guess by private i just mean not having my data pilfered and made into profit. i have no delusions of trying to elude the government nor do i particularly care. I also don't care if the company hosting me can see my data as long as they're not selling it, etc.

outlook.com will serve up some ads but they promise not to sell it or use it for targeted ads.

[Edited on February 21, 2014 at 11:25 AM. Reason : f]

2/21/2014 11:25:16 AM

I don't understand this notion of getting something for free and being annoyed the free service might want something in return

it's not like it's free to host your data

2/21/2014 2:08:43 PM

This is a troll thread, right?

2/21/2014 2:25:48 PM

two of the three options i listed in my first post are paid, office365.com and my own hosting. I would prefer to pay a reasonable fee than to have ads in my face and my info sold.

2/21/2014 7:50:16 PM

AOL DOT COM

jus sayin

2/21/2014 8:17:37 PM

mail.com

2/21/2014 8:24:42 PM

http://www.abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com/

2/22/2014 12:54:36 AM

you could rent you're own exchange server? pay someone in india to patch it/maintin it? sell privary email services??? profit??

2/22/2014 4:57:07 AM

If not seeing ads is what you care about, just use adblock with whatever service you want.

Do you also need office, is that why you are talking about Office 365? For browser access to your email, Office 365 and Outlook.com are exactly the same, they are both using a live account. With Office 365 you could also install and use Outlook (and any Office product).

2/22/2014 5:33:58 PM

I don't care if people profit off my data, as long as they don't send me junk-mail or steal my identity

but of course, being exposed to any of these dangers exposes one to the others, probably

2/22/2014 6:19:14 PM

smoothcrim has no idea what he's talking about. With regards to privacy, outlook.com is about as good as you're going to get with any US company.

privacy != security. Keeping your business data safe from other businesses is not the same as keeping it safe from federal law enforcement.

Quote :

"outlook.com is still scanning your email (to filter spam and malware), they just aren't using it to offer targeted ads. it's a slightly better privacy policy, but if you really have sensitive stuff none of the major services (gmail, outlook, yahoo) will serve your needs."

Basically. ANY email provider that provides for spam and/or malware filtering scans contents. There's no other way to do it. If you go with any of the ultra-secure providers smoothcrim mentions, you have to do everything yourself. Or, open your mailbox to another service to do automated filtering, which just lands you in the same original position.

If this is for your own personal use, aka non-commercial, Office 365 Home Premium is the way to go. You can share it with up to 5 total people on 5 PC's and 5 different mobile devices (where you get the Office mobile apps free). It's 99 bucks a year retail. No email service is included, but you can absolutely connect it with outlook.com, gmail, yahoo or any other provider (or your own domain email).

If it's for business use, O365 Small Business is $60/year/user. You get everything Home Premium has, plus Lync, a private exchange instance with 50gb of mail storage, 25gb of onedrive for business storage (which is private storage on a sharepoint instance), a free public website, and free team sites (aka hosted sharepoint).

-------------

Also in the interest of full transparency, I use O365 Home Premium with a gmail account

[Edited on February 22, 2014 at 7:44 PM. Reason : .]

2/22/2014 7:39:02 PM

I use Office365

but I'll be damn if dtownral isn't a bigger M$ homer than Noen

2/22/2014 11:14:21 PM

I've have a technet sub to O365 for about 4 months now and I just signed up for the 30 day Enterprise E3 eval to prepare for a 100 user GApps migration and I have to say, I'm really digging it so far. MS gave 25 E3 licenses for a month, but I can actually bulk upload my entire user base and just not assign them any licenses until it's go time.

Probably going to roll with http://www.migrationwiz.com for at least the majority of my users. Excited and terrified at the same time yo.

2/22/2014 11:42:25 PM

I always thought lavabit was a good choice. It appears I was wrong.

http://www.infoworld.com/t/encryption/how-secure-was-lavabits-secure-email-not-very-says-researcher-230531

2/23/2014 3:01:05 PM

obvi the answer is sneakernets

2/23/2014 5:20:48 PM

So Dropbox's Mailbox service is going bye bye in February. Doubt anyone really used it, but fyi.

12/7/2015 6:55:12 PM

^Ty for the update

12/8/2015 1:42:51 PM