Microsoft Does Not Know Pop3 Email

In 1996 or so, Microsoft took look at Netscape and that whole internet thing and decided they better get on the wagon. And so they cooked up Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. They were rough and buggy but it was thought that over time the bugs would be stomped out and stability would set in. In the intervening 11 years, thousands of bugs have been fixed but the basic design flaws are untouched. In the case of pop mail, we have one gigantic design flaw: the invitation to change your password whenever Outlook or Outlook Express cannot find the mail server. Most people select an email password, plug it into the program and then forget it. Years can go by and Outlook quietly does it thing. Then, one day, your mail server goes down. Perhaps it was hit by a virus, perhaps it was being upgraded. Maybe you are using Comcast and so it goes down often. Whatever the reason, it goes down. Now, Outlook or Outlook Express could check to see whether the email server is reachable but no, that code is not in the program. Instead, with the server, down, it pops up a window and suggests it might be a password issue and INVITES YOU TO CHANGE IT. Only a computer company with 50,000 employees and vast resources could think that a password change is the correct fix for a server down.