Clearly I’m not the only person in the world that has experienced slowness in Microsoft Outlook; “Outlook slow” is the second most searched-for phrase that leads people to this site, behind “eye twitch”. I have to say that although I’m somewhat happier with Outlook 2007, it’s still not as good as it ought to be. In fact, on a daily use basis, I find Gmail is noticeably snappier.

This includes when I shut off the Outlook add-ons that I have come to rely on; I know that adding things on to an application that I find to be already somewhat slow isn’t all that smart, but there’s no way I’d live without ClearContext or NEO Pro, never mind Anagram.

And in terms of Gmail, it’s not like I don’t add functionality on there too; using greasemonkey, I’m able to add on saved searches, added hotkeys and even conversation previews. But the speed difference is still somewhat astounding.

Although I’m comparing Outlook 2007 to Outlook 2003, I have to keep in mind that I’m using 2007 on a faster computer that has a true dual-core processor. So in fact, it’s probably more than likely that Outlook hasn’t gotten any faster at all between the 2003 and 2007 versions.

The worst slow-down I experience is when Outlook is actually checking my POP mail account, which is the only way that I actually receive email into Outlook. The problem is FAR worse if I’m checking multiple accounts, but it’s really bad even with one, particularly when there are a lot of messages to download. I can’t for the life of me figure out why such a modern application can’t handle the rigors of checking mail, something that email clients have been doing forever.

Colour me frustrated.

Drop me a note if you also have trouble with Outlook slowness, and if you’ve had any success speeding it up I’m all ears!

Tags: , , , , , ,