I definitely think there is room in the market for a new, online, paid email client. One that can connect to multiple outside accounts like Outlook, "infinite" storage, emphasis on privacy, gmail-style user interface, regular backups, and solid customer support. Email is extremely important to people and they don't want to worry about it. I wouldn't mind paying for a reliable and secure email client in the cloud.
We have hosted Exchange at my university. The Outlook web client is perhaps the worst piece of software I am forced to use on a regular basis.
The calendaring is completely useless on the web client. I can't see anyone else's schedules so when I make meetings with them, its like shooting a rifle blind folded. I have to do a "guess and check" method where if Outlook vomits in my face and says someone is busy at that scheduled time, I just guess for the next time slot till eventually one fits.
We don't have nearly as much space as you do, so I am forced to completely delete all my messages 4 times a year to free up space. The UI makes this task such a pain (admittedly it is the uni's fault for not forking up enough $$ for enough space, but it is incredibly time wasting and difficult through the web client).
Do I get some sort of notification when my inbox is full? No. Only, I stop receiving emails and every would be sender gets a message that my inbox is full. This continues until someone I meet in person tells me that they haven't been able to communicate with me online for the larger part of the week. No way to get those emails back.
Oh, and all this is after I forward all my messages to gmail and never use Outlook unless I am forced to.
(Sorry, just venting and getting this off my chest.)
Which version? If you're on Exchange 2003 then complaining about how a 7-8 year old program isn't up to scratch is a bit silly. Even 2007 is closing on 4 years old, and the web interface was improved a lot from 2003 to 2007 and again from Exchange 2007 to 2010 (not sure about calendaring specifically).
And if you are on Exchange 2003 or 2007 then IE gets the good browser interface, and every other browser gets a basic one.
Do I get some sort of notification when my inbox is full? No.
This is because someone hasn't turned it on for you; Exchange does this (by default, I thought). Emails you when you hit the "no more sending" limit, then again as you hit the "now so full you can't receive" limit.
For the older versions of Exchange, OWA is actually pretty terrific in IE, a completely different UI -- they invented XHR to implement it! In the IE version, you can purge your inbox in a couple clicks.
In the last release or two (which not that many organizations use yet), they've unified it so that there's only one OWA that uses the now standard XHR support in all modern browsers on all platforms.
Hey, I hear ya. That sucks that you're having a bad time with it.
Honestly, I live in Outlook, so I only use the web client in a pinch. I like it better than Gmail, but perhaps with heavy use and a small quota it starts to show its warts.
