BostonPocketPC

I am among the legions of people who have come to wholly rely on Microsoft Outlook over the years for my day-to-day PIM actions (mail, calendaring, tasks, contacts). As a result, I (like many others) have cheered the improvements and lamented over the issues related to Outlook. Having first observed and now being a part of the netbook world (in my case, an Acer Aspire One), I thought that my long relationship with thee Outlook client might have to come to an end. “There is no way”, I thought, “that Outlook would ever perform reasonably well on a processor- and memory-constrained platform like a netbook. Folks, I am happy to report that this presumption was woefully wrong.

I have been fortunate enough to be a part of the Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview. When I first received the invitation, I had to decide where and how I would run the included applications. I couldn’t run it on a “production” computer; it is only a Technical Preview, you know I could create a Virtual Machine for it to run on a production computer, but I really didn’t think I would give the suite of applications much attention and use if I did that. This left the Aspire One. With just an Intel Atom N270 processor, 1 GB of RAM and the Windows 7 Release Candidate. I shuddered at the thought, but forged ahead.

The first thing you notice when working with the Office 2010 Professional Edition Suite (the default for the Technical Preview) is the size; more importantly, the reduction in size. Clearly a lot smaller install than in recent years. I took this as a hopeful sign, although the skeptic in me knew that executable size is one thing, but performance is another. I went ahead and completed the installation of the Office products (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote).

Outside of a new splash screen, the initial setup process for Outlook is pretty much the same. I immediately set up my personal hosted Exchange account, planning on immediately following that up by trying out a new Outlook feature that is incredibly overdue – running more than one Exchange account within a single Outlook profile. To this this, you have to shut down Outlook and access the “Mail” Control Panel applet. Once completed, I held my breath and fired up Outlook 2010 once again. This is when the wonderment truly began.

When it comes to Outlook 2010 on my netbook, here is what I can safely say -

1. Outlook 2010 loads as quickly as Outlook 2007 on my other computers. Mind you, I am saying this from an end-user experience perspective (please don’t email me with “I benchmarked and there was a 1.2 second difference; nice to know, but I was more concerned about the experience rather than the raw numbers). Keep in mind that my other computers are far more powerful and only loading 1 Exchange account.
2. Outlook 2010 is as responsive if not more so than Outlook 2007. Again, when you consider the fact that I am saying this about Outlook running on a netbook…
3. Outlook 2010’s memory requirements are on a par with Outlook 2007. Considering the fact that I am running 2 Exchange accounts AND all of the new features included in Outlook 2010, that astounds me.

I simply cannot believe I am saying this, but…

I am running Outlook on a netbook and loving it!

Before I wrap up, a few additional initial comments about Outlook 2010 (expect to see more in the coming days and weeks)…

• I love the ribbon bar. Of course, I’ll need to get used to where everything now is, but I went through the same learning curve with the other Office apps in 2007.
• Conversation View is great. But Conversation View with the ability to still track the thread even after moving emails to other locations is awesome!
• Quick Steps are long overdue. Most people use Rules in Outlook, but I always had a fundamental problem with them – the rules did things before you looked at the message. Quick Steps are more like macros; I can look at an email, then click on a Quick Step icon to do processing. Number 1 use – filing messages without have to drag and drop within the labyrinth of folders I have set up.

All in all, I am more than pleased with Outlook 2010 at this point. As a matter of fact, “pleased” is really an understatement.

I have received a few emails of people having problems with third party plug-ins and wanted to know if there was a way to uninstall the latest SP2 for Office 2007. Well you are in luck, Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) does allow for a clean uninstall where in the past you had to uninstall the entire Office suite and then reinstall. The 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2 (SP2) is the first service pack to support uninstalling the updates for the 2007 Office desktop products.

I haven't had any problems with it so far only speed and stability performance increase, but if you do at least there is a way to roll back the clock.

The Microsoft Service Pack Uninstall Tool for the 2007 Microsoft Office Suite is a command line tool which will assist with uninstalling client patches installed by the 2007 Office Suite SP2. To download this utility click here.

The 2007 Office SP Uninstall Tool is contained in a package called Office2007SPUninstall.exe which is a self-extracting executable file. The tool itself is a single file called OARPMan.exe. There is no installation for the tool. OARPMan.exe, the Microsoft Software License Terms (previously known as End User Licensing Agreement or EULA), and the Readme.txt files will be extracted to the location you specify.
Note that you must use a subfolder such as C:\subdir to expand the tool. You cannot expand the tool into the root directory of the hard drive (for example, C:\).