In my quest to live off of the world of free applications for a month, I’ve shed my addiction to Microsoft’s Outlook and have completely moved to Google. I’m not sure I’ll ever go back to Outlook. Some of this I have reported on in my previous post regarding Gmail. But to be more specific in regard to Outlook:
First, here’s many of the ways I used MS Outlook:
- Grabbing mail from multiple e-mail addresses
- Rules that pulled mail into particular folders. I.e., my inbox was restricted to only priority mail from church members, pastors, my wife, and a few others I needed to hear from quickly. All other mail went into the “Other” folder.
- MS Exchange Server. Through a tech company we have been using, they set us up with Exchange, which has allowed instant synchronizing of calendars, tasks, e-mail, and contacts.
- Organizing mail into folders for quick reference. I had only four folders: Inbox, Kel (my wife), Pastors, Members, Other. I could search a folder for finding an e-mail. I relied on search folders to keep up with mail that I needed to respond to but did not have the time to handle in two minutes or less.
- Calendar. I used a personal and a church/public folder. My public folder was available to staff and our receptionist.
- Tasks. I heavily used the Franklin Covey overlay for Outlook. If you know anything about the Covey system, this overlay organized Outlook to look like the Covey paper planner, and also brought e-mail in. I actually loathed to use Outlook without this overlay ““ Outlook, without this element is a burden to me. Using the GTD system, I did not set many due dates for tasks, but arranged them by context using the category marking system in Outlook. This could be a bit cumbersome to initiate, but proved
- Contacts. Many of my contact information was also tagged with various colored categories for quick reference and sorting: family, friends, church members, etc. I had a system for filtering certain contacts in order to try and follow up with various contacts on a regular basis. Actually, it was quite a hassle to set up and maintain.
- I synchronized my Outlook with Google, so my wife could have access to my calendar and edit it. Because I used exchange, this synchronization was problematic because it required me to enter my password every time it wanted to synchronize. Another hassle.
- Using Exchange server synchronized all of my contacts, calendar, and e-mail with my iPhone. Exchange also would sync my tasks when I used a Blackberry (I used a 3rd party app to wirelessly sync contacts on my iPhone, but it had to be started manually ““ no over the air pushing of my tasks to my iPhone).
For the past 3 weeks I have used Google mail, tasks, contacts, and calendar exclusively. I have opened Outlook only to retrieve or search for mail I needed from the past.
What have I lost?
- Pushed e-mail onto my iPhone.
- Practically ““ Nothing in terms of productivity. All that I did with Outlook, I can do just as easily or more easily with Gmail and calendar. Gmail’s multiple inboxes, labels, search, groups, and filters are vastly easier to set up and use.
- Money, due to the cost of Outlook and Franklin Covey software.
What have I gained?
- Google is free. Outlook is costly by itself and drive the price up of any Office Suite that includes it.
- Outlook was becoming more and more of a burden to start up because of its growing size (I did archive also). My Exchange server also required me to enter a password every time it started ““slowing the process down. With Google, I am quickly into my calendar, tasks, e-mail, or contacts with no re-entering of my password or slowness due to a file on my hard drive. Whether desktop or phone, I can more quickly be in and out of my tasks, calendar, e-mail, and contacts than I can with Outlook.
- Contacts and calendar are pushed to my iPhone instantly. I anticipate the day when mail will be pushed also.
- Quickly handling e-mail. I can quickly star anything I need to follow up on later. I can quickly check off (on both the desktop and iPhone web-app) e-mail I want to mark as read.
- Did I mention Google was free?
- Searching for e-mail and contacts is quicker and more accurate. I find what I am looking for much more quickly in Google than in Outlook.
- I can have all of my multiple calendars from Google at my fingertips instantly whether on the desktop or my iPhone. This cannot be done with Outlook on the iPhone. In fact, I can have my wife’s Google calendar on my phone and on my desktop (or from anywhere I have an internet access). This would easily erase the need for an exchange server with my co-workers.
- Gmail is a collection for all of my e-mail addresses and I can send e-mail from Gmail addressed from any of my e-mail addresses.
I am sure there are even more benefits I have not mentioned to Google over Outlook. Perhaps you could contribute to the pros and cons of Outlook. So far, in this one area, the free is vastly better than the paid application.
