The Microsoft solution for your problem is not Outlook.com - it's Office 365 and/or hosted Exchange. They have a slightly different -- in my opinion better and definitely faster - web UI for the latter.
Being a Google Apps user basically means you have a Google Account associated with that user. Being a hosted Exchange user does not imply that. In other words, you can use an Android phone with a Google Apps account, but with pa hosted Exchange account you cannot log in to a Windows Phone, you need a normal Microsoft Account. In my opinion this is good, because your email is not related to mobile purchases and so on.
I personally find the hosted Exchange/Office 365 solution much better, mostly because it's only about email (+office stuff, if you buy it). It's not polluted with anything else, it does only a few things but it does them well.
Fastmail.fm is a completely different option, I am using that as well, their biggest problems are:
- lack of proper push email (on mobiles)
- lack of good contact management
Calendar is coming soon as far as I understood, and they're the fastest.
> Fastmail.fm is a completely different option, I am using that as well, their biggest problems are: - lack of proper push email (on mobiles) - lack of good contact management
I'm a paying Fastmail.fm user, but I really hope they have something planned for push email, otherwise I'll be looking for another provider when my renewal is due–which is a shame, because I really like them otherwise. I understand that this is as much Apple's 'fault' as anything (for not supporting IMAP IDLE on iOS) but to me, as an end-user, it doesn't matter why it doesn't work, simply that there are other providers who have made it work regardless (e.g. Rackspace).
The Microsoft solution for your problem is not Outlook.com - it's Office 365 and/or hosted Exchange. They have a slightly different -- in my opinion better and definitely faster - web UI for the latter.
Being a Google Apps user basically means you have a Google Account associated with that user. Being a hosted Exchange user does not imply that. In other words, you can use an Android phone with a Google Apps account, but with pa hosted Exchange account you cannot log in to a Windows Phone, you need a normal Microsoft Account. In my opinion this is good, because your email is not related to mobile purchases and so on.
I personally find the hosted Exchange/Office 365 solution much better, mostly because it's only about email (+office stuff, if you buy it). It's not polluted with anything else, it does only a few things but it does them well.
Fastmail.fm is a completely different option, I am using that as well, their biggest problems are: - lack of proper push email (on mobiles) - lack of good contact management
Calendar is coming soon as far as I understood, and they're the fastest.