On 7 January 2002 at 7:09 pm Jon wrote: > I haven't yet moved over to TB from Outlook 2000 yet, so I am seeking > opinions from others about whether or not I should do so.
> For those who have made the shift, what are the biggest benefits you have > noticed? What is the biggest downside you have found? That'll provoke a huge postbag but I feel no desire not to contribute ;) Main benefits: (i) TB! can cope with huge databases of emails (80,000+ in my case!) without crashing or misbehaving; there was never the slightest chance that Outlook could do so, and I was continually having to hive off messages into archives and juggle things around (and there's no need for "PST [Outlook mail file] repair utilities" and similar); (ii) TB! doesn't suffer from intrinsic security problems (not merely a spectator's opinion; my company suffered from several Outlook viruses which caused the most extraordinary chaos); (iii) TB! loads quickly and can be left to run in the background without bloating up the machine; (iv) TB!'s filtering is excellent; Outlook's filters are a sad failure, as they try to use a "naturalish" language which isn't really tractable; (v) TB!'s templates are also excellent; Outlook users see something like "At 6.48pm on 7 January 2002 Fred said:" at the top of the message and think this is wonderful ;) (vi) TB! has no integrated calendar functionality. This might sound rather odd, but on one project I was plagued with meeting requests and other auto-generated bombardments from Outlook. Things actually ran more smoothly when I persuaded everyone to switch off all this functionality because I used TB!, which didn't understand it ;) (vii) The backup and restore is an absolute lifesaver, and would be even better if it could be automated from outside the program (a common request) ... Main demerits: (i) Rather stiff UI - customisable toolbars and suchlike are more important than I thought; (ii) The learning curve is phenomenal; after several months using the package I'm still learning every day. Unfortunately, most people don't have the time or motivation for this, and it's a bit annoying when you've overlooked something because the online help isn't very good (if a secret benefactor were willing to pay 6 months' salary I'd gladly vanish into a corner and rewrite the whole help system from scratch for nothing ;) Alastair
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