Jason Clarke

I was quoted again in an article on Computerworld’s website regarding the performance of Outlook 2007. While the spirit of my comments are fairly accurate, there are a few inaccuracies in the article, and some relatively harsh words were used to describe things that I know I used softer language on. I’m sure this falls under the heading of creative license, but it makes me come off as sounding somewhat harsh towards a couple of Outlook add-ins that I love.

Here’s the section I contributed to:

Jason Clarke, who works in the technical sales and marketing department at Wenco International Mining Systems Ltd. in Richmond, British Columbia, receives about 100 e-mails daily. He said that on his PC, Outlook 2007 “hangs completely for three to seven seconds typically, and up to 20 seconds in worst cases when new mail is being downloaded.”

Turning off Outlook add-ins that he has installed, such as ClearContext Corp.’s e-mail management software and Caelo Software Inc.’s Nelson Email Organizer, “does improve matters marginally, but not nearly as much as it should,” Clarke said. “The hesitation is still very noticeable — jarring even.”

Clarke, who oversees Wenco’s e-mail system, has posted information about Outlook’s slow performance on his personal blog. He blames the problems on the new e-mail indexing engine that Outlook 2007 shares with Windows Vista.

The indexing allows searches to be done almost instantly in Outlook 2007, a vast improvement over Outlook 2003. However, the process also appears to be CPU-intensive. Microsoft recommends that users put indexing on a regular schedule instead of letting it run constantly in the background.

Now, I just want to point out that I consider ClearContext and Nelson Email Organizer to be essential Outlook add-ins, and made the point in my email to the author, Eric Lai.

Also, between the first time I spoke with him back in November for an article that came out in December, and now, I have a completely new job, albeit at the same company. I can assume some blame for that, though, since there’s no reason to think that within a few months someone would change positions. But I feel weird about it nonetheless.

For what it’s worth, here is the content of my email to Eric. To preface it, Eric linked to a few complaints about Outlook 2007 performance on the web, and asked me whether I thought the complaints were legitimate. Here is my response:

I’m struggling with how to answer your question; I’ve read the links you provided below to some of the user complaints with Outlook 2007, and while I’m certainly frustrated with the product’s performance, I’m not having the same kind of trouble these users are complaining about.

I actually wrote about my frustration with Outlook 2007 about a week ago on my personal blog in a post called Outlook Slowness. My complaint is weak compared to the others you referenced; I’m basically saying Outlook 2007 is mildly better than Outlook 2003, but that I’m using a faster PC so it’s not really a fair fight.

The specific performance issue that I face is that Outlook hangs completely for 3 to 7 seconds typically, and up to 20 seconds in worst cases when new mail is being downloaded. Turning off the Outlook add-ins that I rely on
(ClearContext and Nelson Email Organizer) does improve matters marginally, but not nearly as much as it should; the hesitation is still very noticeable, jarring even.

After testing Microsoft’s desktop search product (the one that Outlook 2007 nags you to install), I came to the conclusion that it is inferior to many of the other similar free products that are available (like those from Google, X1 / Yahoo, and Colibri), and removed it from my system. But it’s worth noting that anyone that is using a desktop search product to index their email for faster searching is likely to see a noticeable performance
hit.

I’m still running Outlook 2007 on a Windows XP system. I should note that when I tested it using the exact same PST file (email catalog) on Windows Vista, I found it to be noticeably snappier. Some of the enhancements that
have been made to Vista allow Outlook to load in a few seconds after a reboot, whereas on XP it can take Outlook up to 30 seconds to become usable on the exact same system. Unfortunately, I haven’t used it enough to comment reliably on the actual email download hesitation problem. In fact, I’m dying to do exactly that and see if I can ease my pain.

For people that are frustrated with Outlook’s performance, Brad Meador at ClearContext posted a fantastic tutorial for ensuring the health of your Outlook mail (PST) file. At one point I was experiencing a significant overall Outlook slowdown, and following Brad’s advice helped matters greatly.

I hope this helps!

One last point I should make. I’ve put a lot of time and energy into Outlook over the years, so it may come as a surprise to some of my readers, but I finally found the ultimate solution for it. A Mac.

That’s right; I had the opportunity to choose a new laptop at work, and decided to get one that would simply help me get things done, rather that having to muck around with every last little thing. For the moment I’m using separate Gmail accounts to manage both my personal and work related email, and finding the experience very enjoyable. Gmail excels at handling very long email threads, which is something that happens in my work email very frequently.

Beyond that, I may give Apple Mail a try as an offline email client. So far I haven’t felt the need to. And it would be disingenuous of me not to admit that although I’m operating most of the time in Mac’s OS X operating system, Intel-based Macs do run Windows fine, and I have a Windows instance available to me whenever I need it. In fact, that’s where I keep my archive of emails from before the point where I decided to switch to Gmail, and it works just fine.

So, I’ve given up on Outlook for day to day work. But if you want to or have to use it, do check out Clear Context and Nelson Email Organizer. They both have the capability to supercharge the way you deal with your email, and both work fine for me under Outlook 2007. And although I do have affiliate links for both of these software packages, you’ll note that I’m not using them here. I truly think that both of these software packages are worth your time, and I don’t want you thinking that I got paid to say so.

Tags: Computerworld, Eric Lai, Outlook, Outlook 2007, Outlook slowness, Clear Context, ClearContext, NEO, Nelson Email Organizer, Mac, OS X, Gmail