Top
Best
New

Posted by Adam-Hincu 8 hours ago

Microsoft new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly(www.windowslatest.com)
445 points | 319 commentspage 3
drudolph914 3 hours ago|
I will say, a positive thing that has come out of msft's 20ish year run of consistent incompetence and piss poor leadership, is that there are quite a few former msft engineers (now retired) that are posting great lectures and educational content on youtube.

also, idk when, but the talent level of a "msft engineer" from 90s to early 2000s feels like they runs laps around the msft engineers of today. it's hard to not feel that the suits cannibalized what was at one point an extremely profitable company with great engineering culture for nothing but shortsighted gains

sreekanth850 5 hours ago||
Hardware has become insanely fast, while software has become absurdly inefficient. During the Windows XP era, I use to browse the internet even on dial-up connections, use Yahoo Messenger, and run everything on a desktop with just 512 MB of RAM and a 40 GB hard disk, everything worked, but today basic use on Windows often need a minimum 8gb ram. I wish I could go back.
jl6 5 hours ago||
> Speaking of memory, the new Outlook uses between 490 MB and 636 MB of RAM while idle, with individual sessions varying based on mailbox size. Outlook Classic, doing the same job, uses around 117 MB to 148 MB at idle. A roughly fourfold difference.

They really picked the wrong timeline in which to 4x RAM usage for no benefit.

FinnKuhn 7 hours ago||
The "free" version of outlook that replaced Mail is so bad that it made me finally switch to Thunderbird and I don't see myself going back anytime soon.

The only thing I'm missing sometimes is the Copilot integration, but copy and paste with Thunderbird is still faster than using Copilot in Outlook...

navigate8310 6 hours ago|
When I was using Thunderbird on Windows back years ago, i abandoned it in a week because it was absolutely slow when fed with years of archives as compared to Outlook 2010. Seeing recs for Thunderbird recently says something for sure.
FinnKuhn 6 hours ago|||
Apparently, they did a rework of the interface a few years ago.

https://github.com/thunderbird/developer-docs/blob/master/th... and https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/02/the-future-of-thunderbi...

Telaneo 6 hours ago||||
I don't even think Thunderbird has gotten any significant speed improvements over the years (unlike Firefox). The only real reason it's gotten better on that front is that processors and I/O have gotten faster. Meanwhile, Outlook as managed to take every morsel of improved hardware, and squandered it.

I've never had problems with Thunderbird on that front, but then again, I've never had email accounts with 100k emails archived.

Joe_Cool 5 hours ago|||
I really like Betterbird. It's basically ESR Thunderbird + a few fixes.

If you want mail to just work and updates going smoothly it's the solution.

perarneng 6 hours ago||
JavaScript needs to do whatever JavaScript needs to do.

It's incredible when we have AI assistants that slow shit like that still ships in products affecting millions of users. Imagine how much totally wasted energy that costs just because the companies are cheap. Just port it to Rust and run it as webassembly at least.

Eric_WVGG 5 hours ago||
hey, I have a question for any product managers who are in charge of making decisions re: rebuilding app UI in Electron, like 1Password with their entire app, Adobe with their dialog boxes, Windows with their Start Bar (!#@!$!)

My understanding was that the proposition of Electron is that it’s there's some cross-platform advantages, also it’s basically easier and you can hire a junior dev to wing it.

My understanding of AI is that you can just tell a junior dev to vibe it.

So can't you turn your AI’s on making native UI via vibe apps? Shouldn't that be really easy for any idiot, and also performant?

rafterydj 5 hours ago|
Not a product manager but I habitually try to play devil's advocate as one. I think it's popularity, full stop. You _could_ vibe code a native app no problem - but then you're targeting one set of hardware. If you're already just vibing it, why not make something that will work cross-platform while you're at it? And if an LLM is prompted with that, they'll usually go with the popular choice: web app on Electron.
Eric_WVGG 1 hour ago|||
Okay, but Windows isn't cross-platform.

Adobe is but they have a ginormous multi-decade codebase that mastered cross-platform UI ages, an LLM coding assistant ought to be able to "add a range input here using our standard UI library" much more easily than "rebuild this with Electron."

1Password at least has a decent excuse for a rotten decision.

bluGill 4 hours ago|||
There are plenty of cross platform options. I write with Qt for example.
cable_ 5 hours ago||
On the subject of Microsoft gripes, MS Purview removing focus from a text box for several seconds every time I paste something is driving me insane. Was just enabled recently at my org, but apparently has been a problem since 2024 at the earliest: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/answers/questions/1791527/...
thot_experiment 2 hours ago||
I use Office 97 for this reason, it's like 400mb installed and everything happens instantly. Grab a copy off archive.org!
boobsbr 1 hour ago|
I'm more of a Lotus guy.
Adam-Hincu 8 hours ago||
2026 Microsoft software in a nutshell. More clutter, less performance.
rcleveng 2 hours ago|
Congrats to the new outlook team on the performance improvements, I certain it used to take 30 seconds to do it, and they've cut it to 10s !!

But seriously, can we please make desktop productivity apps not suck on windows? I started programming on windows, old school Win32 with a little MFC. Still have the super thick MFC book from MikeB somewhere in the closet. It was better than the alternatives at the time.

Now I look at the windows developer site and I can't even figure out what happened since I stopped Win32 programming at around 2004. It's a total train wreck of abandoned technology, each worse than the previous ones.

Office (and to some degree visual studio), used to be the lighthouse, best in breed application, often using api's that were not yet public and styles that were not yet adopted. I remember buying component libraries that emulated these to make better looking and performing apps.

I'd look at windows again if they would make apps not suck and be ones that the industry strives to emulate. Without that, Linux or Mac is just as good (actually better since they have decent userlands).

More comments...