Question:
What is the difference between Microsoft Exchange and Outlook? We only use Exchange on our workstations, but I have an icon on my desktop for Outlook. Please explain.
Answer:
The Exchange Client is sort of the ancestor of Outlook. It’s the early messaging client created as a front end to Microsoft’s Exchange Server and is perfectly functional for some tasks like e-mail.
Outlook, however, is the next generation. It adds quite a few more features: full-featured address book, calendaring, groupware, and e-mail among others.
If you just do messaging, then the Exchange client may be perfectly adequate for you. It is a smaller program and is likely to run faster on less powerful systems. Generally, however, I recommend that people use Outlook, because the additional information management features are awfully nice.
Also, the Exchange client isn’t really being developed anymore. Outlook, on the other hand, is an active, thriving product with excellent support and a growing list of third-party add-ins that provide even more functionality.
