Best way to _SPEED UP_ Outlook2003 ? (e.g. More RAM, Dual processors...?)

ship wrote:

Softwa
- Outlook2003
- WinXP Pro (SP2)
- Google Desktop
- Norton (on one PC) /McAfee Virus Scan (on another PC)


Hi

I am looking for ways to SPEED UP Outlook!


Try using IMAP instead of POP. It will keep the mail on your server (as
well as keep local copies if you want) so you don't have to copy your
Outlook file from computer to computer.

Outlook was always slow and buggy when I was using it. It is ok at first,
but once you add more email accounts and the email piles up then it becomes
sluggish. Maybe try Thunderbird, a free replacement to Outlook:

http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird/

It's not perfect either, but it's pretty good.

My experience with all versions of Outlook I have used (97, 98, 2000,
2003) is that what slows it down most is (a) a bad connection to the
mail server, or (b) a slow or overloaded mail server.

If you'd use IMAP you wouldn't need to download the messages, and
probably your performance problem would be solved.

However, I have found that Thunderbird interacts much better with IMAP
than Outlook, so I use OL only where I need to access Exchange Server.

ship wrote:
Softwa
- Outlook2003
- WinXP Pro (SP2)
- Google Desktop
- Norton (on one PC) /McAfee Virus Scan (on another PC)


Hi

I am looking for ways to SPEED UP Outlook!

Should I:
a) Increase RAM OR
b) put in a dual processor ??

As webmaster, I am using Outlook to handle huge amounts of mail.
Quite a lot of it is unavoidable legit stuff (receipts, feedback forms
etc)
though I confess quite a lot of spam/viruses etc.

I am using about 30 "rules" to filter the emails into the correct
folders.
The big problem is that downloading my mail seems to KILL my PC's
speed!
i.e. Whilst it is downloading ANYTHING (form an external POP3 server)
the PC
immediately becomes almost unusable (to do anything else at the same
time).

I am forced to have my email housed in a POP3 server because I work
from 3 different physical offices. (What I do is simply copy the entire
PST file
to/from my iPod - it copies quite fast about 1 GB in say 2 minutes...)

My .PST file varies between c. 750MB to 1.75GB depending on how much
I have archived off how recently. But even when it's down to
750MB, it's still DAMNED SLOW whilst Outlook is downloading.
Btw, I regularly use SCANPST.exe to clean up the PST file.

So... what's the best way to improve speed:
- More RAM
- A second processor
- Or is there some Windows setting that can stop Outlook from grabbing
so many "resources"

(Incidentally the REALLY strange thing is that if I fire up
Contol/Alt/Del and get
the task manager the processor almost NEVER seems very busy and the
Page File useage seems quite low... and the physical memory only ever
seems
about half used too... so why is it SO SLOW!!)

Any thoughts?


Ship
Shiperton Henethe

P.S. Here is the spec of my hardwa

PROCESSOR: Intel Pentium 4 based system
MOTHERBOARD: Intel Pentium 4 D945GNTLR system board
Integrated Intel GMA950 graphics
*Intel High definition audio
*Intel 10/100 LAN*8USB 2.0
*4 conventional PCI *2 PCI Express x1 *1 PCI
Express x16 *1 Serial*1 Parallel
*4 Serial ATA interfaces
*1 Parallel ATA IDE interface with UDMA33,
ATA-66/100
*PS/2 Keyboard port *Mouse port
*Intel Pentium 4 3.2Ghz Processor 775 chipset 800FSB
2Mb cache
RAM: 1Gb (2x 512Mb) 533 DDR2 memory
GRAPHICS CARD: Matrox Millenium P650 PCle 128 - 128Mb Dual DVI/VGA PCI
Express X16 - s/n: KEW37452
CASE: ATX Midi tower with 300W 12V PSU
DISK: Seagate 120Gb 7200rpm SATA hard drive
OPTICAL: DVD RW dual layer +&- drive
FLOPPY: 1.44mb 3.5" Floppy disk drive

ship wrote:
Softwa
- Outlook2003
- WinXP Pro (SP2)
- Google Desktop
- Norton (on one PC) /McAfee Virus Scan (on another PC)



How about using descent rules at the server level to fend off some of
the spam before it gets to you. Try to keep your pst below one gig and
scanpst is a last resort. Might also create a clean profile/pst as
they can get trashed, I had one wouldn't delete deleted items... what a
pain. Also if you have google desktop and norton and XPPro indexing
all at the same time, nothing will help. Try rebooting and killing off
google desktop and Norton, then rerun outlook and see what kind of
speen increase you get. I have quite a few addresses and sites and
understand the frustrations. I also have tried other tools and they
all have problems, outlook works when it works, but when it doesn't -
what a pain.

In article , Pat Willener wrote:

However, I have found that Thunderbird interacts much better with IMAP
than Outlook, so I use OL only where I need to access Exchange Server.

There is no good IMAP client; they all suck to various degrees:

** Outlook works well as an IMAP client, but as a Microsoft product you
always have to worry about security vulnerabilities.

** I just stopped using Thunderbird as an IMAP client because although it is
superior in many ways, it seems to have problems removing folders from its
local cache when the folders are deleted from the server. There are a coupl
other minor issues too, although for many people, it or Outlook will work fine.

** I'm now using Mulberry. Mulberry used to be maintained by Carnegie Mellon
University, the people that maintain Cyrus, the IMAP/POP3 server software my
mail server runs. It has some extremely cool features but has some quirks too.

I'm still exploring all of its quirks and capabilities...

** Pegasus -- well, I just am not terribly fond of Pegasus, especially the
fact that it tends to treat IMAP as the ******* child (in my opinion).


--
Steve Sobol, Professional Geek ** Java/VB/VC/PHP/Perl ** Linux/*BSD/Windows
Apple Valley, California PGP:0xE3AE35ED

It's all fun and games until someone starts a bonfire in the living room.

Hi - thanks for all the feedback folks - OP here.

1. No one has told me whether/how much a second processor would help
in practice

2. What about having a HUGE amount of RAM - does anyone think that
the problem might be paging sections of the .PST to/from disk?
Maybe I should get another 1GB or even take it up to say 4GB total
does anyone think that would help much?

3. Like I say I work from 3 different offices in 3 different
geographical
locations. So I'm not sure that MAPI would work (??)

4. Regarding turning off my anti-virus filtering of emails as they come
in
- that sounds irresponsible in the extreme! That would mean that
the
anti-virus software would only have ONE chance to kill a virus -
i.e. when
you actually open the email. I think I'd rather have the think kill
them as
they come in, unread.

5. XP Pro's indexing.
Now I'm not at all clear about this. If you do a search using WinXP
it seems
to be BL**DY slow - certainly about 1000 times slower that
GoogleDesktop!
Nonetheless it sometimes IS useful because GoogleDesktop cant filter
properly
on size, specific date ranges, partial names etc.
Now quite frankly being as WinXP Pro is *SO* slow at searching even
with the
indexing turned on, it seems to me that I may as well turn it OFF -
because if
a search is going to take more that 20 seconds it may as well take a
couple
of minutes for all the use it is. And if turning off the indexing
speeds up the
entire rest of the PC significantly then that would be well worth
it!
Can anyone tell me how to turn off the XP indexing? (And is there
some way to
bet back the filespace used by the indexes too...?)

With thanks


Ship
Shiperton Henethe




Concreteman wrote:
ship wrote:
Softwa
- Outlook2003
- WinXP Pro (SP2)
- Google Desktop
- Norton (on one PC) /McAfee Virus Scan (on another PC)



How about using descent rules at the server level to fend off some of
the spam before it gets to you. Try to keep your pst below one gig and
scanpst is a last resort. Might also create a clean profile/pst as
they can get trashed, I had one wouldn't delete deleted items... what a
pain. Also if you have google desktop and norton and XPPro indexing
all at the same time, nothing will help. Try rebooting and killing off
google desktop and Norton, then rerun outlook and see what kind of
speen increase you get. I have quite a few addresses and sites and
understand the frustrations. I also have tried other tools and they
all have problems, outlook works when it works, but when it doesn't -
what a pain.

"z" wrote in message
...
Maybe try Thunderbird, a free replacement to Outlook:


Thunderbird is *not* a replacement for Outlook. It can't do half of the
things that Outlook can do.

That said, it is a decent email client and I use it sometimes myself.

1) In a way it is answered; it is not processor intensive so you are fine on
this level.

2) Depends on what else you are doing with the computer but in general you
won't get much more of a performance increase (at least from Outlook) when
taking it past the 1GB. After this you only benefit from the System Cache.

3) I'm not sure what you mean by this. Location doesn't have to do anything
with things. I can read my e-mail from anywhere from the planet as long as I
have an Internet connection.

4) LOL this myth is definitely ranked #1 here.

5) You can't compare native XP search and a true indexed search. Use Windows
Desktop Search and not XP search if you want to compare results with Google
Desktop Search. Rightclick the disk- Properties and you'll find your
indexing option. Either way; it is not going to speed up your machine so I
wonder why it is this topic.

--
Robert Sparnaaij [MVP-Outlook]
Coauthor, Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003
http://www.howto-outlook.com/
Outlook FAQ, HowTo, Downloads, Add-Ins and more

-----
"ship" wrote in message
oups.com...

Hi - thanks for all the feedback folks - OP here.

1. No one has told me whether/how much a second processor would help
in practice

2. What about having a HUGE amount of RAM - does anyone think that
the problem might be paging sections of the .PST to/from disk?
Maybe I should get another 1GB or even take it up to say 4GB total
does anyone think that would help much?

3. Like I say I work from 3 different offices in 3 different
geographical
locations. So I'm not sure that MAPI would work (??)

4. Regarding turning off my anti-virus filtering of emails as they come
in
- that sounds irresponsible in the extreme! That would mean that
the
anti-virus software would only have ONE chance to kill a virus -
i.e. when
you actually open the email. I think I'd rather have the think kill
them as
they come in, unread.

5. XP Pro's indexing.
Now I'm not at all clear about this. If you do a search using WinXP
it seems
to be BL**DY slow - certainly about 1000 times slower that
GoogleDesktop!
Nonetheless it sometimes IS useful because GoogleDesktop cant filter
properly
on size, specific date ranges, partial names etc.
Now quite frankly being as WinXP Pro is *SO* slow at searching even
with the
indexing turned on, it seems to me that I may as well turn it OFF -
because if
a search is going to take more that 20 seconds it may as well take a
couple
of minutes for all the use it is. And if turning off the indexing
speeds up the
entire rest of the PC significantly then that would be well worth
it!
Can anyone tell me how to turn off the XP indexing? (And is there
some way to
bet back the filespace used by the indexes too...?)

With thanks


Ship
Shiperton Henethe




Concreteman wrote:
ship wrote:
Softwa
- Outlook2003
- WinXP Pro (SP2)
- Google Desktop
- Norton (on one PC) /McAfee Virus Scan (on another PC)



How about using descent rules at the server level to fend off some of
the spam before it gets to you. Try to keep your pst below one gig and
scanpst is a last resort. Might also create a clean profile/pst as
they can get trashed, I had one wouldn't delete deleted items... what a
pain. Also if you have google desktop and norton and XPPro indexing
all at the same time, nothing will help. Try rebooting and killing off
google desktop and Norton, then rerun outlook and see what kind of
speen increase you get. I have quite a few addresses and sites and
understand the frustrations. I also have tried other tools and they
all have problems, outlook works when it works, but when it doesn't -
what a pain.

On 6 Sep 2006 02:00:45 -0700, "ship" wrote:

Hi - thanks for all the feedback folks - OP here.

1. No one has told me whether/how much a second processor would help
in practice

Based on the specs you published, I doubt going dial core would speed
things up much. It would however, allow you to multitask more
effectively.

2. What about having a HUGE amount of RAM - does anyone think that
the problem might be paging sections of the .PST to/from disk?
Maybe I should get another 1GB or even take it up to say 4GB total
does anyone think that would help much?

I think the performance increase would be minimal.

4. Regarding turning off my anti-virus filtering of emails as they come
in - that sounds irresponsible in the extreme!

Not permanently. Just as an experiment, to see what impact it has on
performance. If Norton turns out to be the biggest culprit, you could
seek another anti virus solution.

A_C

z wrote:

Outlook was always slow and buggy when I was using it. It is ok at
first, but once you add more email accounts and the email piles up
then it becomes sluggish. Maybe try Thunderbird, a free replacement
to Outlook:

Hardly. A free replacement for Outlook Express, maybe, but not Outlook.
--
Brian Tillman

ship wrote:

1. No one has told me whether/how much a second processor would help
in practice

Probably not. If I/O is the bottleneck, adding processor power won't help.

2. What about having a HUGE amount of RAM - does anyone think that
the problem might be paging sections of the .PST to/from disk?
Maybe I should get another 1GB or even take it up to say 4GB total
does anyone think that would help much?

Files don't get paged, process address space does.

3. Like I say I work from 3 different offices in 3 different
geographical
locations. So I'm not sure that MAPI would work (??)

If those MAPI connections were to three different Exchange accounts, it
would be a problem (but separate profiles could handle it), but otherwise
that won't make a difference.

4. Regarding turning off my anti-virus filtering of emails as they
come in
- that sounds irresponsible in the extreme! That would mean that
the
anti-virus software would only have ONE chance to kill a virus -
i.e. when
you actually open the email. I think I'd rather have the think kill
them as
they come in, unread.

Then kill them unread. You still don't need a scanner for that. Your eyes,
the sender, and the subject of the message should suffice.
--
Brian Tillman