DPI Settings With Outlook 2007

The geniuses over at Bronto have uncovered yet another flaw with the always problematic Outlook 2007. By testing to different computers using Outlook '07 at the their office, there were always glaring inconsistencies with two specific machines. Yet, the two computers that always had issues would always break in their own special ways.

Through diligent research, it was determined that the two computers had separate DPI (dots per inch) settings. The default DPI setting on Windows machines is 96. One of the computers was set to 120 DPI (the large setting) and 82 DPI (a custom setting). The former would blow out the images, causing breaks and the latter would shrink the images also causing rendering flaws.

Basically, only Outlook 2007 (and not any other desktop email client such as Thunderbird) will break any email with a setting other than the standard DPI setting of 96.

This doesn't sit well with me considering that no matter how meticulous you are when testing emails it still might end up broken when it reaches some users' inboxes. The only remedy that comes to mind is to spread the word and awareness through Email Standards Project. If there's enough outcry from the community maybe, just maybe, developers will wise-up and listen.