Tender exchanges

I'm feeling a little tender about Microsoft at the moment; note that's tender about not tender towards. My imminent office move involves migration to Exchange and I'm not looking forward to it. As a consequence of using Exchange, we're not being forced to use Outlook as our mail client; it's just that if we use anything else we won't be able to use the office calendar or book meeting rooms.
And Outlook is pants. The interface is too involved, yet doesn't offer most of options of many other email clients. Message filtering and contact handling are weak and performance is particularly poor.
And that's without even considering security; apprentice hackers cut their teeth on VBScript in spam designed to trip up Outlook, and I have my doubts that Service Pack 2 will do anything to remedy this.
It goes hand in hand with any Microsoft technology; there's even a virus for Microsoft Pocket PC handhelds, and don't get me started on the IIS web server.
While it possibly isn't Microsoft's fault that there are so many viruses, bugs and general issues with its software -- and I don't want to be yet another one to jump on the Open Source bandwagon for no reason -- we are supposed to be technology savvy. There are good reasons for using Microsoft Windows as an operating system and even for Microsoft Office, but there are plenty of valid alternatives to Outlook and Exchange. If even we're capitulating, what hope for anyone else out there?