Evolution

Is this a proper Outlook replacement?

30 September 2008
Platform: Windows 2000,Windows XP,Windows Vista
Type: freeware
Manufacturer: Digital Intellectual Property
Size: 34.2MB
Rating:

Verdict: Great open source program

Evolution fills a gap left in Openoffice, that of a replacement for Outlook.

Mozilla Thunderbird is very good for email but needs extra plugins to manage calendars and todo lists. Evolution has been available for Linux for some time but now there is a version for Windows.

The appearance of Evolution is very similar to Outlook. There are buttons to access the different parts of the program on the left along with the relevant folders. Unfortunately this and the toolbar were turned off when we installed Evolution but it was very simple to turn them back on.

All the popular email formats are supported including POP and IMAP and there is a junk mail filter built in and ready to use. External images are blocked by default with a quick keyboard shortcut to re-enable. Evolution asked whether it should accept the certificates when reading emails with an encrypted connection. There's nothing wrong with this in principle but the messages could have been better written for beginners.

The calendar page is a good way of keeping on top of appointments and can read online web calendars so you can see what other people are up to as well. Evolution can be used with a Microsoft Exchange server.

Searching is possible throughout the different sections and works very well with good results provided very quickly.