Open to alternatives to Microsoft's Outlook

I am trying to implement an open source policy. Is there a program that will replace all of the functionality of Outlook? Alan James

In a word, no. Outlook is an email program, a personal information manager (PIM), a component part of Microsoft Office, a groupware program that works with Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint Server and a synchronisation program that works with most PDAs and some mobile phones.

However, you may be able to get the functions you need from alternative programs. For email, there is Thunderbird, a companion to Firefox; a calendar program, Sunbird, is in the works. For other functions you can look at Chandler (http://chandler.osafoundation.org), which is developing rather slowly, and Ximian Evolution (http://gnome.org/projects/evolution but there's a Windows installer at http://shellter.sourceforge.net/evolution), which is often used with the Gnome desktop on Linux. Both are open-source. If you just need a good PIM, there's still Ecco Pro (http://www.compusol.org/ecco).