alt Hacker NewsMicrosoft new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly
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https://archive.is/pcRNR for those who prefer minimal stalking as they travel the web.
[even when the top-level tracking preferences look full off, if you dig down you'll find some “part” on, and you can't set them full-off (you are blocked from disabling tracking by Amazon at least)]
[Mental note to self: add “windowslatest.com” to “are you really sure you want to go there?” DNS greylist]
New Outlook also does not do IMAP for me at all. Even though it says it does, sending you on a nice time wasting goose hunt. Thank you MS.
At this point I would pay up front (one-time fee) for a Windows email client that rendered fast, worked with multiple account types including Outlook, had a nice simple interface so I can focus on the messages, and didn't have AI stuffed into it. Seems like we just don't have that.
My first week at a new job that forces me back into Windows (with WSL). I'm about ready to throw my machine out the window and follow after it. I understand that a lot of the performance issues are things like crowdstrike and Defender and maybe some poorly configured network proxy stuff but Jesus, this sucks. I write embedded software for machines with 1 ten thousandth the compute of my dev machine, I should not be encumbered by issues like this.
The mobile app does this too. When you open a notification it first brings you to an old email you already had open and it takes a number of seconds before that's replaced by the one you were notified for.
A pool of notifaction-agents trying to upsale copilot or staying quiet, is stateful aka a turing machine. If you use enough of these agents they can draw and behave like any software e.g. outlook
Me: I'm tired of this, grandpa... Microsoft: Well that's too damn bad!
The Outlook web app breaks browser navigation, I thought we had that figured out in SPAs like, more than a decade ago. But it does load almost-instantly (less than a second) so that's nice at least.
Teams, the new outlook are both piles of garbage. They've been garbage for years, and will probably still be garbage in a decade from now.
Teams takes 2gig of memory on launch, and still misses keystrokes because it is so unresponsive. Click on someone and start typing and half your chat isn't recorded. Absolute hot garbage.
Outlook isn't much better.
People who worked on them should be ashamed to consider these products shippable.
Literally was just googling yesterday about why Windows File Explorer genuinely takes longer to boot up than microsoft edge. Insane how fast they are enshittifying.
Oh man! How do we ever get enough compute to run AI if AI-written apps end up eating it all?
its faster to use an LLM + MCP (chatgpt or claude integration cloud integration) to search your email than to use the search field in the web browser now
its also possibly cheaper than the monthly licence fee for the desktop app suite
new Google homepage takes [many] seconds to do what classic Google did instantly
They may consider rewriting their web-based apps into native apps using IA.
Web apps are a scourge.
It should be based on Team's code base :-)
While I don't like the new Outlook much, half the time I use it is through a browser on my Linux box anyway, when I check work email from my own hardware...
I'm also don't agree with the assertions that you cannot address performance issues in a web based application. The actual email rendering in Outlook classic is still an embedded browser engine. Now it's just doing more of the application. If anything VS Code and the underlying editor system should show that you really can create pretty responsive applications on a browser surface... no, it's not the fastest, but if you're comparing to a lot of "full" IDE applications, it's a massive improvement... Visual Studio around 2010 was absolutely horrible for building web based applicatons, with common freezes and input lags.
There's plenty of room for improvement in these applications... I think the web shift is more to support cross platform better than it is to avoid optimization. At this point, they really want to be able to support Android, iOS, Windows, Mac and maybe unofficially Linux. The browser is the best bet to make that happen. I think that wasm can bridge a lot of the performance issues where service interactions go beyond the immediate state. With the rust ecosystem as good as it is for wasm target usage, I'm frankly surprised more of the logic isn't already there instead of JS. That said, I don't know how much is effectively asm.js or electronic translations to JS, or relying on server functionality. I haven't dug that deep.
That said, there's plenty of room to optimize web based applications. Even if it comes down to single-channel RDP application shells to a server-running application remotely. I think the point is to share as much as possible and support as broad an audience as they can. I think this is still happening in a context where three are still those that are trying to keep Windows on top and ignore Linux, while others in the org want to fully embrace it.
microsoft is an amazing study in managed decline
that people still buy this, businesses still rely on their infrastructure, and their stock is somehow world-class is outstanding for the fact that its operating system can't do what middle school level coders can accomplish
Teams Classic is better too.
Gave up on the fluffy article 8 paragraphs in, is the tldr the new one is web and slow? Cause that doesn't explain 10 seconds.
The funny thing is that the Outlook client for Mac is a native app and it's way better than the Windows client.
Outlook for Mac is surprisingly good, though. Every interaction feels (and is) native.
Kudos to the team. I think this is same team that maintains Office Suite for Mac.
I hope to see Teams for Mac in the future. Current Teams app is dogshit.
I wonder how many MS engineers are lamenting how superior Classic Outlook is for AI integration. COM and VBA let cc do pretty much everything.
Win11 may be the best thing for Linux. After all, people who are pissed by Win11 may eventually change operating systems.
Now if only Linux were to offer a useful GUI ...
"Old" Outlook is slow enough as well. Especially with Corporate "security" software.
Is anybody still using email in 2026?
Everybody I know uses IM systems like Wechat, WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal.
Everything this company touches is shit. Unbearable.
Similar one about WhatsApp on Windows. What a shitshow.
https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/06/13/whatsapp-is-eating-...
Why is anyone still using Windows in a year greater than 2010?
Outlook is probably the worst software I encountered. I have seen relative being reduced to tears because she was not able to find her important emails and genuinely thought they were gone only to find out Outlook search is so crap it wouldn't find them despite getting literal sentences that were in those emails. I also particularly like merging unrelated email threads into one so you end up not following what the threads are about. The focused view is the best. It hides the emails you actually care about from you. Software like this should be illegal to distribute.
powered by AI
New outlook also pre loads ads and it takes a few seconds for the paid verification to go through before the ads go away. Very frustrating clicking on the first email at load time only to realize it is an ad. Just the icing on the sh*t cake.
How else would we know Microsoft is still Microsoft?
It's the "blink twice if you're okay" test for them.
On a side note, how long did it take for IBM to go from being everywhere to becoming irrelevant?
I have ~3 lower/mid range Linux laptops and 1x mid/high range windows gaming laptop. It's amazing how slow the windows machine is despite being an absolute beast compared to the linux machines, which have way worse specs.
I don't get Microsoft (and in some ways Apple and Google). Huge companies with humongous amount of engineers. Many very capable people.
They can't find 5 to build a native app for a platform used by a billion people?
Like really now? Why the f is this a web app? What's the point of an OS then?
Honestly, for most intents and purposes, we could have just stopped with Outlook 2010. I'd have paid $5/mo for security patches.
Copilot is now helping you out :)
They so screwed Outlook. The stupid thing refuses to respond after switching to a diff network or SSID till it’s completed some synchronization of some kind. The stupid app refuses to come into focus.
I really don’t need the freshest view at once. Maybe I just need to look at an open email you dog of an app!
Why did they castrate Outlook? Does MS hate itself? What in the name of shit are they thinking? Who does this make happy?
I honestly don't even care so much because I do everything on my phone these days but yes it has become apparent that Microsoft hates Office.
The only thing not slowing down is the speed of enshittification at Microslop.
> like all web apps, it’s slow
No, that's a very uninformed take, and contradicted on two fronts:
1. Microsoft's other native apps have gotten unusably slow lately, too.
2. There's definitely plenty of fast web apps.
I don't mind snark, but make it factually accurate.
This is just Microsoft's poor strategic decision to try to drive as many as possible to Linux. Hell, weren't they bragging recently about managing to make opening the start menu take only a tenth of a second? It should be instant.
Maybe they think we'll replace users with AI, too. AI is the only thing slower than Microsoft's UIs lately.
enshitification
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They should just ask Copilot to convert it into a native app /s
But in all seriousness, if MS really did believe in copilot, there would be no need to write webapp slop. They could just write native app slop.
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What is outlook doing that it didn't already do under windows xp? Surely it should be blazing fast by now