Office Outlook 2003
Be warned - Yes Outlook 2003 does seem to be superdooper, but be warned, if you haven t got Word 2003 you won be able to create templates or use Word as your email editor, which is extrmely annoying. Had I known this before I bought Outlook 2003, I would have bought the whole Office upgrade as I now have to buy the Word 2003 upgrade to be able to use Outlook properly - why is microsoft so frustrating??
A vast improvement - This version of Outlook is a great improvement on the Office XP version which I used previously. To start with it is visually more impressive and makes it far easier to organise your emails. I especially like the ability to group your emails by day so that they stand out better.The Junk-mail filter is excellent and has successfully caught every bit of junk I have been sent so far. It did this straight out of the box with no additional configuration from me.Other than these features I cannot say that I have yet discovered all the differences between this and the previous version. Is it worth the price? In my opinion it is.
Is this worth the money? - Office 2003 is a much nicer suite of tools than previous versions. I really do like it. Nevertheless, I got my version very cheaply from local Dixons when it closed. Various competitors have caught up, Software 602 and Software 905 have free or very cheap compatible programmes which are worthy in their own right. AbiWord looks impressive as well.I m not at all sure Microsoft is still worth the big premium, even with the students & teachers concession.
Outlook Junk Mail Filter is Great - This feature alone justifies the pgrade to Outlook 2003. I receive between 100-200 SPAM mails a day. Outlook 2003 catches between 99%-100% of these. It is so effective, I have disabled my third party SPAM killer.
Mr Woods is wrong. - I m not particulalry a Microsoft Fan but I hate to see them blamed for someone else s mistake.The previous reviewer should have checked the stated functionality on the Microsoft Web site before buying then he would have known that business contact manager is part of the larger office Suite.The interface has in fact had a major overhaul and is much faster, there are changes to the way active X and Embedded objects are handled (not run by default) in Emails which have important implications for security and prevention of viruses from junk mail. Obviously users upgrading from Outlook XP will not see much change in look and feel but it s often the changes under the hood that matter. Anyone running Outlook 2000 or previous versions with a fast enougth PC would benefit more and find this a significant upgrade.