Banish Honey Hotlips to your junkmail folder... (MS Outlook 2000)

Member Name: Morgenhund

Product:	MS Outlook 2000
Date:	03/04/01 (421 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great palm syncing

Disadvantages: security issues

I have been using Outlook 2000 since I first started working with Office 2000 in the summer of 1999 (hmm… the name is a bit of a misnomer then isn’t it – yep!) and it is still my favourite mailer for my specs. Whilst for the typical home-user, Outlook Express is likely to be the most useful mail program, given its all in one in-built newsgroups control (indeed Outlook 2000 has to use Outlook Express as its newsreader, although in all fairness newsgroups are not at prominent as in earlier times, and they are of little use to most business clients, who are Outlook 2000’s intended users.), but for anyone who is a bit more of a power-user then Outlook 2000 is a better choice.

Outlook is simply more than a mail program, being a schedule and a contact manager, and if you are a Palm owner, and your Palm is shipped with Chapura Pocket Mirror, then you can link it seamlessly to your Palm, with easy syncing and the means to synchronise it with ease. The interface is also very similar to PalmDesktop, which means that if you are used to using that, then this fits in very nicely. The calendar syncs to “Date Book”, your e-mail to “Mail” (although I rarely use this), notes to “MemoPad”, tasks to “To Do List” and contact info to “Address”. Chapura Pocket Mirror is available for around $40 otherwise, and further details can be obtained from www.chapura.com.

The calendar/schedule allows you to keep track of all the events that are happening and as a groupware tool, it can be used to allow you to arrange meetings with colleagues in the office, and well as pass around contacts, memos and business cards. The business card format is the standard .vcf format, which means that most mail programs will be able to accept them. One of the things that is very useful is if you have multiple identities (this is not a joke about schizophrenia!) that you can assign assorted sigs with business car
ds attached to each identity, thus making it possible to use the same program for home and business use, and also with multiple internet connections/ISPs.

The Outlook today page allows you to take control of what you want from Outlook, being traditionally set-up to show your appointments for the coming few days and the state of your inbox, drafts and outbox (used if you send your mail after writing offline), as well as any tasks.

The useful feature of Outlook 2000, in terms of e-mail provision, is the organise/rules option. I regularly receive large volumes of e-mail and like to be able to sort it quickly and efficiently without have to sift through my inbox. By setting rules it is possible to sort your e-mail by sender, recipient, date, content, subject line thus cutting out a lot of the day-to-day pruning of your e-mail. Rules are easy to set-up in the first instance and there is scope for a lot of depth to filter them to exactly the right place. However occasionally messages can go missing although the search function will usually find the offending culprits.

As well as the usual range of priority for e-mail, asking for confirmation that a mail has been read, it is possible to screen your e-mail for junk and add certain senders to the list of junk mail senders (that means you – buongiorno.com and others…!) and also a similar filter for adult content – so future messages will be highlighted, although with the tricks spammers use it can be a long and laborious process. So you'll find that the titular Miss Hotlips won't be bothering you too frequently.

As part of the Office 2000 suite, there is near seamless integration with the office programs, making it easier to send documents/files directly from office, although I still prefer to save things and add them as attachments for the reason that filenames are otherwise forgotten. The permitted size of attachments is obviously determined by your ISP –
; may be between 1Mb and 3Mb on the whole.

I had previously used GroupWise at work which had a very handy notify program, and whilst an icon will appear in the System Tray of Outlook to say that you have got a new e-mail, accompanied by a personalised audio tone to inform you, the notify function is something that could be improved on.

My only major gripe with Outlook 2000 is that it allows e-mail stationary, a horrible thing if ever I saw one, but of course in order to stay with the rest of the field this is important so that those horrible multi-coloured messages you get from friends arrive as intended. There is support for all types of e-mail (i.e. plaintext, rich-text or html e-mail), which can be chosen.

One thing that has been picked up on is Microsoft Outlook 2000’s susceptibility to viruses and security problems, mainly stemming from the inclusion of VB Script in the program. I would advise people to be precautious about only attachments, and would recommend using a virus killer (such as InoculateIT) that offers real-time virus protection. With InoculateIT you won’t be able to open any nasty virus bearing attachment, as Virgil wrote “timeo Danaos et donae ferentes”. At least though Microsoft do issue frequent software patches, although there are still repeatedly problems from time to time.

Overall Outlook 2000 builds on the features of Outlook Express, whilst still maintaining the familiarity of the office products. If you are an Office user, then it really makes sense to expand your Office experience to include your e-mail.

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