I have heard all the arguments as to why no one needs Outlook, but last night,
my niece, a very smart person (full scholarship to MIT, MSCompSci at Berkeley
paid for by Bell Labs, etc.) gave me her reasons for using Outlook.
I'm going to quote her message to me and I'd like to get reasonable responses.
"The main reason Outlook is my choice is its integration of calendar, contacts,
e-mails, documents, and tasks (to-dos). You can create a task and attach to it
any relevant information including documents, e-mails, contact info for people
involved, links, etc. When you’re ready to schedule the task, you can drag and
drop it right into your calendar. When you go to do the task (either from your
calendar or a task list), everything you need to accomplish it is right there in
front of you.
"As an example, we [my niece runs a small consulting business] are looking to
hire a web designer. My business partner has sent out a request for
recommendations and has been forwarding me the e-mails that look worth following
up on. I’ve promised her that tomorrow I’ll check out a certain particularly
promising web designer. The action is scheduled in my calendar, with all my
partner’s web designer e-mails attached. When I go to check out the designer’s
previous works, all the links are right there in her e-mail; when I’m ready to
call her, her contact info is there. When I’m done checking her out, if I want
to follow up with some of the other designers, I can just copy the task to my
task list or to a future time slot in my calendar, because all the e-mails from
the other designers are also attached to the current task.
"Pre-Outlook, I would have seen in my Palm calendar that it was time to check
out the web designer. Then I’d have had to go to my e-mail and search for the
e-mail my partner had forwarded to me from that particular designer, to follow
the links and contact her. When I was ready to check out additional designers,
I’d have had to go find all those individual e-mails to decide which ones to
check out first. That’s a particularly simple example, because it includes only
e-mails, but you could imagine if there were also documents I needed to check,
and contact info to look up, how much easier it would be if it was all in one
place, right there in my calendar. “It’s 10:00 – here’s what you need to do,
and everything you need to do it.” I can go straight into action, without all
that hidden un-planned-for prep time it used to require."
Doesn't that sound like something we'd all like to be able to do?
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
