navinthebean's Full Review: Microsoft Outlook 2002 Full Version for PC (543-01...
My copy of Microsoft Outlook came with the MS Office suite that I bought last year. On its own it retails for $109 and it’s one of those Microsoft products pretty much everyone I know either owns or uses. Although somewhat slow, it rarely crashes and I have absolutely no complaints except that it can do a little too much, making it quite complicated for the average first-time user.
Apart from being a mail client, MS Outlook is a whole communications portal in itself. Some of the more evident features include:
Calendar: Your average calendar. This can be used to schedule appointments and tasks.
Contacts: Who you know and what you know about them.
Address Book: I don’t see the need for a separate Address Book in addition to Contacts (the two could be merged to make life simpler) but anyhow, here it is.
MS Outlook allows you to do everything most other mail clients do. It supports attachments, you can set the message’s priority level, create signatures, change the font type and color, and much more. I wouldn’t say the program is completely customizable, but it does let you add or remove buttons and bars and there is also a whole set of other options in the options menu.
It’s very easy to set up a mail account with MS Outlook. All you have to do is enter a few details such as your name, incoming & outgoing mail servers and your username and password, and you’re ready to go! It’s also possible to download email from multiple mail servers --- I get email from three different email addresses all in one place, saving me a lot of time in the process.
MS Outlook automatically checks email every now and then, provided the program is left on. I’ve set it to download email every 5 minutes, so I can reply almost as soon as I receive an email.
I can easily backup and restore my email using the Import and Export options. This is particularly useful for me since my brother has a habit of formatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows every time we’re home from college :(
Another feature I like is that I can choose to leave my mail on the server. With this option, I can download my mail onto both my laptop and the desktop. This works well because I can read my email offline on whichever computer I’m using.
MS Outlook has an advanced filtering system called the ‘Rules Wizard’ where you can move messages around depending on whether the email is from or sent to an email address, or contains specific words. There’s even an option to block suspected junk mail or adult content.
Thanks to the ‘Find’ feature, I no longer have to trawl through several hundred emails just to find the one I’m looking for. I can search for particular words and narrow the search by limiting it to from/send to addresses, messages that are read or unread, have attachments or don’t, size, etc.
Many people have asked me what the difference between Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express is. It’s quite simple, really: Outlook Express is a skeleton of MS Outlook that comes packaged free with Internet Explorer. It is, at its best, a mail client, and nothing more. MS Outlook, on the other hand, bears all the extra features – calendar, journal, notes, tasks and what not. If you don’t need all this fluff I suggest you go with Outlook Express: it’s $109 cheaper (read: free), it loads quickly and checks your email much faster than the hefty MS Outlook.
Microsoft Outlook 2002 provides a single, integrated solution for organizing and managing your digital communication tools such as e-mail and instant ...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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