Gates and Microsoft are truly part of the axis of Evil. They want you distracted, they want to waste your time, they want to keep stupid messages in front of you at all times.
Linkedin is also in bed with Microsoft, they should be viewed with suspicion.
A quick review did not indicate any great options to Outlook, for what I use it for, for my primary source of business communications, sorting easily into folders, good searching, auto filling email names as I type, good spam filtering.
Any one done their due diligence on this topic? Of course I am concerned that microsoft is selling my information, intercepting my emails, etc.