LookOUT 2007

[Rick Chadderdon]

Gerard Seibert wrote:
> If it weren't for MicroSoft virtually forcing hardware developers to
> improve their offerings, we would probably still be stuck with 386's
> and 12mb. of memory. Somebody has got to push the envelope, and
> MicroSoft is the only OS doing it. 

I agree with your overall sentiment that we shouldn't allow our 
computers to stagnate, but my experience with my own clients is that 
people don't upgrade their hardware for new OSes or new application 
software.  I've had very, very few clients ask me what kind of new 
computer they'll need in order to move up to the next version of 
Windows, or the newest version of Office.  In fact, nearly all of my 
customers want to *avoid* upgrading either their OS or their application 
software for as long as possible.  No, I do upgrade consults for 
*gamers*.  (Or their parents...  "Tommy tried to install this game, but 
it wouldn't run.  What do we need to do?")  This was somewhat true even 
in the old days...  I upgraded a lot of Windows 3.1 users to Windows 95 
because of new "Windows 95 only" games.  I will freely admit that I 
didn't take x86 PCs seriously until Windows 95, though.

I don't object to Microsoft taking advantage of the power of newer 
machines, but I do find it rather annoying in the case of Vista that the 
*requirements* for the OS are so high.  I've seen nothing in Vista that 
justifies using so much machine for just the OS.  I do need to run a 
Vista box so that I can be familiar with the thing when my clients call 
with questions about it.

Currently I'm running Vista Ultimate on a Core 2 Extreme X6800 with 2G 
of very nice RAM and an X1950XTX graphics card.  I have a very fast 
array of 3G SATA drives, and Vista does look pretty and it's quite 
snappy.  But...  The same box feels faster with XP SP2.

And, to stay on topic, Outlook 2007 runs quite poorly on this box.  
Well, for what I do.

My current IMAP archive of this list begins in August 2005.  The IMAP 
archive for my primary address holds all of my mail since 1998.  That's 
a lot of mail, in case you're wondering.  The SPAM folder alone contains 
more than 114,000 messages (I keep them for sentimental reasons... :) ), 
and there are probably 150 folders of sorted (and unsorted) mail.  I 
added only those 2 accounts to Outlook for testing purposes, and 
synchronized them via a LAN connection.  Outlook feels a *lot* slower 
than Thunderbird with those same (and seven other) accounts active and 
synchronized (on the same machine).  Actually, Thunderbird on my office 
machine, running Gentoo Linux with far less power (2.4G P4, 1.5G RAM, 
decent SATA hard drives) feels faster than Outlook 2007 does on the more 
powerful machine, again with the same accounts and more.

I recognize that Outlook 2007 is more than just an email client, but 
*as* an email client, it stinks.  And, in my opinion, one would be 
better suited to run (gasp) separate apps for each of the things Outlook 
does rather than use that bloated, slow application and compromise on 
*everything* it does.

Rick