Comparison between Outlook Express and MS Outlook

In this post, I am going to discuss the basic differences between MS Outlook and Outlook Express Both, Outlook Express and MS Outlook belong to “The Microsoft Outlook” family of Emails Clients.Outlook Express is best suited for the needs of home users as it is used for basic E-mailing functionality however, Outlook is designed to fulfill the needs of business users, it works well as a “Messaging” as well as “collaboration client”, you can also say that , “Its an Email client as well as a personal information manager”.

What is Outlook Express?
Outlook Express is included with Internet Explorer as a free version of Outlook e-mail and news client.  It supports the commonly used internet standards (IMAP, SMTP and POP3) that let you get the basic email functionality i.e.  Emailing, news, and address book.

Supported Microsoft Internet Explorer versions: All Versions from Internet Explorer 4.0 to Internet Explorer 6.0.

Supported Operating Systems: Microsoft Windows (Windows 98 to Windows Server 2003), Windows 3.x, Windows NT 3.51, Windows 95 and Mac OS 9

What is MS Outlook?
MS Outlook comes with the Microsoft Office suite as a messaging and collaboration client, it is not a free version. Its basic functionality is similar to Outlook Express but it provides wider set of features that makes it suitable for business applications.

Supported Operating Systems: All versions of Windows later than Microsoft Windows 95, versions of Windows earlier than Microsoft Windows 95, and Macintosh platforms.

Some major differences between Outlook Express and MS Outlook:

• Integration with Microsoft Exchange Server: With the help of MS Outlook you can work in integration with Microsoft Exchange Server.
• Better templates for sending emails.
• Better Contact organization: MS outlook provides various features that let you organize your contact easily; also you can append additional information (such as phone numbers, address, company name and website.)With the contacts.
• Comprehensive calendar: There is no option in Outlook express to track appointments, set reminders, alarms and track important dates. But MS Outlook provides you comprehensive calendar that let you do all these activities.
• Task management: There is no task management feature in Outlook Express but with the help of tasks option in MS Outlook you can easily create task lists and can also set deadlines and priorities for various tasks.
• Synchronization feature: There is no Synchronization feature in Outlook Express.
• With the help of Synchronization feature in MS Outlook you can:
• Synchronize your email, calendar and tasks with smartphones.(To enjoy this Synchronization feature the smartphone must have Outlook installed or Windows Mobile).
• Synchronize your calendar and email with Google's Gmail and other Web-based email   programs.

MS outlook provides wider set of options as compared to Outlook Express, but still in some situations it is preferred to use Outlook Express. Such as, if you just need a simple email client with a smaller learning curve, you can choose Outlook Express. Or if you have less hard drive space then, Outlook Express is a better choice because MS outlook will require more use of Processor resources.