Microsoft Outlook has a vast base of users. There are some who love it, some who hate it but have to use it because it’s the cornerstone of their office’s information system, and some who are more or less indifferent. Outlook is a personal information manager (PIM) comprised of three major functions: e-mail, contact management, and scheduling. As it turns out, Windows Vista comes with all three of these PIM tricks built in to the OS. This raises a question: If you upgrade to Vista, do you need Outlook?

With years of hardcore Outlook dependence under our belts, we explored the possibilities. Having spent considerable time with Windows Vista sans Outlook, we can honestly say that it’s possible to live without the Microsoft Office PIM, but your success will vary based on what you actually need out of your information management software.

Home users shouldn’t have any problem converting from Outlook to a Vista-fueled, Outlook-free lifestyle. It might be more difficult at work, though, and power users might find that they miss some of Outlook’s more advanced features that aren’t found in Windows Vista’s PIM tools. —next: Windows Mail, Calendar, and Contacts>

Windows Mail, Calendar and Contacts
Vista comes with a trio of tools that perform the major functions of Outlook. They’re creatively called Windows Mail, Windows Calendar and Windows Contacts. They do exactly what their names imply: e-mail, scheduling and contact management, respectively.
,
Earlier versions of Windows included an e-mail component (Outlook Express) and a contact manager of sorts (Address Book). There was never much of a calendar program, so a user’s ability to schedule reminders and track tasks was severely limited. To make matters worse, Outlook Express and Address Book both have the all the sophistication of applications from the early 1990’s. In other words, they stink.

Vista’s PIM tools represent two major upgrades in Windows Mail and Windows Contacts, and a brand new component in Windows Calendar. Suddenly, Windows’ own freebie software is useful! Windows Mail is exponentially better than Outlook Express; Windows Contacts soars high above Address Book, and Windows Calendar can practically run your life for you. Let’s look at each of these apps separately.

Windows Mail
Outlook Express is a functional e-mail reader, but that’s about the only nice thing there is to say about it. It’s dated; it’s completely devoid of features; and it’s about as powerful as Notepad. Windows Mail contains the core functionality of Outlook Express (it handles email and newsgroups), but it’s faster and includes major feature upgrades: it flaunts a fairly strong anti-spam component; it supports message flagging; its rules system is far more intuitive; its GUI is customizable; it checks your spelling without Office installed; it tries to protect you from phishing attacks; and so on.

Windows Contacts
This is an interesting program and a complete departure from Address Book. Windows Contacts is less of a separate applet and more of a special type of Vista folder. You can easily add contacts to it (a New Contact button appears on the toolbar), including tons of details from multiple e-mail addresses and phone numbers to gender, birthday, notes, and digital IDs. Each contact is saved as its own file in the Contacts folder, to which you can navigate through the file system just as you’d navigate to any folder. The contact files are Vista-readable with a “.contact” extension. Not only can you tweak their contents, but you can treat them like ordinary files and mark them read-only, hidden, and even find shadow copies (earlier versions of the file) in case you mistakenly overwrite a contact.

Windows Calendar
This scheduling program is surprisingly powerful. It takes the form of a typical calendar program, reminiscent of the calendar view in Outlook. You can view your schedule by day, week, work week, or month; there’s a smaller month view for quick-clicking on specific dates. It includes a task pane, and the GUI is customizable. And it’s loaded with other functionality. You can add appointments complete with pop-up reminders. Recurring appointments are easy to create. You can even publish your calendar on a network or Web server so other people can see it, and subscribe to other people’s Vista calendars. —next: PIM Synergy>

PIM Synergy
Three separate components are pretty neat, but the true power of Windows Vista’s PIM is that these components work together seamlessly, just like the components of Microsoft Outlook.

For example, you can easily invite attendees to appointments/meetings through Windows Calendar—it automatically launches a Windows Mail note and you can choose from your contacts in Windows Contacts to address it. You can sometimes launch others of the three sister apps through buttons in their toolbars; for example, Windows Mail features buttons to launch Calendar and Contacts so you don’t have to surf through the Start menu.

For another example of the Vista PIM apps working together, you can right-click on senders in Windows Mail and choose to add the sender to your contact list. The sender will appear in the contact list already formatted, but you can edit as needed.

If you want to share a task or an appointment with someone without formally inviting that person to a meeting, you can right-click it in the Windows Calendar and click Send Via Email; it’ll automatically format the task or appointment into an iCalendar (.ics) file and create a new email message with it attached.

The three apps are also covered by Vista’s built-in backup and restore features. Outlook is notoriously difficult to back up, and has even spawned a small cottage industry of third-party products designed to back up and migrate its data.

While they appear as three separate apps to the untrained eye, Windows Calendar, Windows Mail and Windows Contacts make up a fairly powerful PIM through their natural ability to work together. That functionality, which comes with Windows Vista, would cost a pretty penny if you had to purchase it as a third-party package. —next: Outlook Features that Vista Lacks>

Outlook Features that Vista lacks Of course, the Vista PIM gang isn’t a standalone application, and it can’t do everything that Microsoft Outlook can. Outlook is simply more powerful than three freebie apps can be expected to be.

Outlook, for example, supports server-based sharing. Public calendars can be assigned permissions for some people to view, and for others to alter. Outlook fully integrates with Microsoft Exchange Server for features that standalones just can’t support, like out-of-office access and incredibly enhanced security.

Outlook works seamlessly with the other Office applications, including Word and Excel. You can use each to enhance the others. Vista’s PIM programs don’t interact with any other applications, and Vista doesn’t include a full-featured word processor or a spreadsheet of any kind. Outlook 2007 has features like the To-Do Bar, that shows everything you need to take care of at a glance. Categories can be colorized in Outlook 2007 so you can organize them with more oomph. You can flag emails as tasks in Outlook 2007.

Outlook boasts far more comprehensive and compatible synchronization with portable devices. Handhelds, PDAs and palmtops tend to feature compatibility with specific programs, and Outlook has a huge catalog of compatible devices. Windows Vista’s Sync Center, which not only covers PIM data but media and miscellaneous files, isn’t widely compatible with the vast majority of PDAs, so if you’re dependant on an electronic assistant you might not be able to live Outlook free.

That’s just a sampling of the Outlook features that you might miss if you decide to abandon it entirely. —next: Living Life Lacking Outlook>

Living Life Lacking Outlook
Casual users, home users, and even home office users can probably get by with Windows Vista’s variety of value-added data management software. We’ve managed to live without Outlook for a week (we should mention that the writer of this article is a telecommuter who works in a home office). Honestly, though, having used Outlook 2003 on Windows XP for more than three years, we were delighted at how easy it was to slip into the Vista PIM programs.

In an office environment, it’s probably impossible to shun Outlook (and Office in general) or some equivalent, but how many of the super features do you need at home? If you need a decent word processor, a spreadsheet, and other Office-type apps, you might end up with Outlook as part of the package, but try to do without it. You might be pleasantly surprised and find yourself able to shake off the shackles of at least one Microsoft Office application. Try living life Outlook-free with Vista!

Source : Windows Vista www.pctipsbox.com

Related Posts

• Will Vista Run Your Current Games?
Those guys at ExtremeTech continue to pump out some really good stuff lately, today’s link, is an ...
• The Ultimate Windows Vista laptop
The most visible part of Windows Vista is the Aero interface, and while we can’t deny that it ...
• TweakUI for Vista (x64 too!)
Many people online are wondering if Microsoft will be releasing a TweakUI for Windows Vista or not. ...
• What Is The Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor Tool
Windows Vista is the first Windows operating system with a user experience that adapts to take advan...
• Upgrade to Windows Vista without a Previous Version of Windows….
Hack Zine had a great post on how to upgrade to Windows Vista without having a previous version of W...
• Make Windows XP Act Like Vista
Not thrilled about spending a bundle on Vista –and dealing with potential bugs and hardware upgrad...
• Windows Vista : Will Vista Run Your Games: The Final Word
It seems as though we have been writing about Windows Vista in the future tense forever. Nobody will...
• Windows Vista Upgrade Secret
There is a well known Windows Vista Upgrade secret in the IT community. In this article I talk ab...
• 20 Million Vista Licenses Sold
Microsoft claims Windows Vista is off to a fast start, having sold more than 20 million copies since...
• Windows Vista on a PSP with Youtube Video
It was really only a matter of time before some modder posted a grainy out of focus video of a PSP r...