A New Outlook on Outlook

I spoke with members of the Office Outlook 2003 team this morning, regarding issues I had encountered after upgrading to the Beta 2 Technical Refresh. Much of that discussion would be beneficial to anyone applying the Technical Refresh to a Beta 2 installation.

Except for some crashes--that Outlook 2003 automatically recovered from--I encountered few problems with Beta 2. But the Technical Refresh introduced a string of disconcerting quasi-related problems. For example, Outlook no longer could remember to associate signature files with e-mail accounts. Another: Outlook no longer could remember to mark a message read when viewed in the preview pane. A larger problem: The product consumed an enormous amount of memory.

It turns out that most, new glitches can be resolved by zapping the old user profile and creating a new one. For those people, like me, with multiple e-mail addresses this can be a nuisance. But the new profile creation is an artifact of the beta process. Customers that later upgrade existing versions of Office to 2003, when it ships, should not need to create new profiles.

The preview pane glitch is a known problem Microsoft discovered just before releasing the Technical Refresh. The problem is fixed in subsequent builds.

Much of the memory consummation issue appears tied to Outlook add-on, Business Contact Manager. BCM is slated to ship with three of the six planned Office 2003 versions. The program adds client relationship management features to Outlook, akin to some features found in ACT! or GoldMine.

I had installed BCM with the Technical Refresh, not realizing the product’s hefty memory requirements. Immediately following update, Outlook typically would consume a minimum 105MB of memory, which usually rose as new e-mail came into the inbox. At the same time, BCM ran a runtime version of SQL Server, known as Microsoft SQL Desktop Edition, which consumed an additional 25MB or more of memory. During my troubleshooting process, I removed BCM, which significantly jacked down Outlook’s memory usage. Still, Outlook consumes more memory than I would like.

During the phone call I was informed that Outlook memory usage is typically tied to the size of the program’s data file. The larger the file, the more memory Outlook may need to run smoothly. As I write this, Outlook is consuming about 53MB of memory. My Outlook data, or PST, file is about 500MB.

Installation of BCM requires even more memory, as I learned earlier from my troubleshooting. Microsoft apparently plans to issue new, fairly-hefty system requirements for BCM when Office 2003 is complete. Unfortunately, these memory requirements may limit the product’s attractiveness to some customers. While BCM offers some very promising CRM capabilities at a great price (free), businesses interested in the product may want to proceed cautiously. The Technical Refresh cycle would be the best time to put BCM through extensive testing--to make sure PCs have enough processing power and memory to run the program.

Microsoft rolled a pre-Technical Refresh build out to about 40,000 employees a few weeks ago. So far, there are no logged complaints. Microsoft “eats its own dog food,” as company executives put it. Employees run beta software before release, as part of Microsoft’s quality-control process.

Two notable changes in the Technical Refresh relate to junk mail.

Microsoft expanded the database of filters for checking junk mail. I noticed the difference, almost immediately after applying the Technical Refresh. The new filter catches more than 90 percent of the spam that I receive and now very rarely pegs wanted mail as junk.

Microsoft also modified the HTML-mail blocking feature. By default, Outlook blocks external content, such as images, that appear in HTML-formatted, or Web, e-mail. These typically contain Web beacons.

A Web beacon is a transparent image, or clear gif, placed when a browser or e-mail program opens an HTML page. Unlike other images, the user cannot see the clear gif. Reputable firms often place Web beacons in HTML-formatted e-mail, as do mass marketers and unidentified spammers. Just viewing a message in the preview pane is enough to summon a Web beacon. In its more sublime form, the Web beacon merely verifies the e-mail address is valid, which could lead to more spam from the sender or whichever third parties that share the mailing list.

While Microsoft makes it fairly easy to either turn off the feature, the company modified the blocking in response to concerns raised by legitimate, commercial e-mailers. So now, Microsoft has tied the trusted list of e-mailers to the blocking feature. For example, users that subscribe to e-mail newsletters can designate the sender as trusted, so the mail isn’t inadvertently sent to the junk pile. Optionally, users also can enable viewing of external content by each of those designated “trusted” senders.

The change is a smart one. Microsoft has found some balance between fighting spam and ensuring good customer experience with legitimate, commercial e-mail.

Posted by Joe Wilcox at June 26, 2003 12:00 PM