The "Send" Button and What It Should Do

As I've said before, I use Outlook a lot. It does a lot of nifty things. I recently posted about one of the problems Outlook has with calendars. This post deals with email.

A close family member recently tried to send me something from an application. He clicked the email link and the Outlook email window popped up since that is his default email client. He clicked send and the window closed. Minutes passed and I still hadn't received the email. Now if you are a normal person like him, you would think that when you click "Send" that email is going to be sent. Not the case with Outlook. So I told him that he would need to open Outlook for that message to actually go. He expressed his disappointment to me that the application worked in such a stupid way and I said, "You're absolutely right. You know what, that's why I hate Microsoft today. I'm going to make a post about that." You see the greatest minds available at Microsoft decided "Send" should just queue the mail up for delivery and should you ever open Outlook again, that is when your messages will be sent.

Obviously Microsoft cheaped out on the focus group for this one, but just to save you a buck Microsoft, here's some quick stats for you:

• 10 out of 10 people expect that when they click the SEND button on an email, it's going to SEND and no other steps are necessary.
• 9 out of 10 people think buttons that say they are going to do something should do that thing. (that 10th guy is obviously a Microsoft shill)

Problem: I click SEND on an email and it DOESN'T SEND
Possible Solutions:

1. Have Outlook send that email in the background
2. Have the button say "Send Later" or something to that effect when Outlook is not already open
3. Have a "SEND NOW" and a "SEND LATER" button. Have Outlook open itself if someone clicks "SEND NOW" and queue it up if they click "SEND LATER"