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Microsoft Finds Solution for Sluggish Outlook Performance

As several users, including yours truly reported, MS Outlook is painfully slooooooow.  I especially liked Mini Microsoft’s description:

“You’d think I had just sprayed the inside of my poor mega-laptop with saltwater to induce non-stop fritzing. I’ve learned to meditate while Outlook ruminates over ten incoming POP messages of 69K. Perhaps it takes a few seconds over each incoming message or RSS feed to contribute to solving a Grand Challenge. Or it and Desktop Search have to play 333 iterations of rock-paper-scissors everytime a change has to be written.”

Microsoft recommended solution was to reduce one’s Outlook data file.  Apparently few users followed it, so now Microsoft came out with the absolute solution: Windows Live OneCare  deletes users outlook.pst file.  You know, that’s the unimportant little file where you keep all your email, contacts, appointments, tasks ..etc.

Computer Not Working 3I suppose starting from scratch with an empty data file speeds up Outlook…

This is so pathetic, I don’t really know what to say … Phil Wainewright said it best on ZDNet:

“It’s astonishing that in the midst of a serious challenge from a new generation of Web-native office suites, Microsoft should give its rivals a helping hand by handicapping its own product so badly…”

Amen.

Update (3/10):  Deja Vu… MS programs killing MS programs is nothing new… 

 

Comments

  1. Anonymous says

    Maybe Microsoft is trying to reduce support costs by convincing users to switch to Gmail/Google Calendar 🙂 Now that their data files are gone, there’s nothing that ties them to Outlook! Seriously, though. I moved my mail to Google Apps a month ago, and I don’t know why I spent all that time watching Outlook act like it’s downloading a 100MB attachment every time I get a two line plain text message.

    • I am ready to pull my hair out over my outlook performance…has nothing changed with this regard in the last 153 weeks?? Admittedly, I am still on Outlook 2003. Would updating make a difference or am I just looking for a newer version of the same problem?

  2. Isabel, have you found a good solution to move your old email to gmail, or is it just a “fresh start”?

  3. Anonymous says

    Funnily enough I thought to turn on the Logging so I could see what was going on and Miraculously Outlook has been performing stellarly! No delays…. I have been working for over 20 minutes without one delay after turning on the logging…

  4. … that trick works!!!

  5. Microsoft OutLook might well not be the problem but your ISP POP3 mailbox

    Do you preserve all the mail on the server etc

    dont use a decent IMAP service with outlook and everything just works that bit nicer…

    POP3 is evil

    regards

    John Jones
    http://www.johnjones.me.uk

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