Do you keep Outlook open all the time?

[Slipstick]

Following last week's issue of EMO, Larry had this to say:

"re the "create OL item w/o opening OL" discussion-- I'd be interested to know the % of people who "use" OL but do not have it opened, say, 100% of the time. I find it hard to believe that resources still would prevent users from basically having OL open 24/7--that's what I do-- "

There are no stats for this so we'll attempt to collect some.

Note: you do not need to be registered or logged in to Vote in the poll but do need to register if you'd like to comment in this thread.

Response 1: You fit the 24/7 crowd. You open Outlook soon after the computer boots and leave it up until you shut the computer down. If you accidently close Outlook or it crashes, you reopen it immediately. Open 100% of the time.

Response 2: You'd like to be a 24/7 user but often close Outlook to release resources or to avoid being distracted by new email. If you accidently close Outlook or it crashes, you'll wait until you need it for something to reopen it.

Response 3: You don't open Outlook soon after booting the computer (you'll do some other work first), but once its open, you'll leave it running until you shut the computer down or Outlook crashes. If you accidently close it, you won't reopen it right away. Open around 50% of your computer use time.

Response 4: You open Outlook when you want to check mail then close it immediately. You like a clean task bar and don't leave any programs running. You never accidently close Outlook (because its not open long enough to be closed accidently).

[sslogan]

I voted that I use it 24/7, but I do close it and reboot my computer at least every 24 hours.

[outlook]

I keep outlook open 24/7. I am still using 2003. What sucks is I like to run it with the .PST off my NAS drive so if the network burps I have to close and re-open Outlook and get the 10 minute rebuilding Personal Folder message. A few times a year I have to reboot the NAS cause some file lock gets stuck on the PST file.

I have thought about maybe putting the PST back to local and using WHS or something to back it up but man, all my files are on the NAS and it is so easy to back the NAS up.

[ToolmanTim]

What about, multiple mail accounts that requires opening and closing Outlook throughout the day to read the mail.

[Slipstick]

Originally Posted by ToolmanTim

What about, multiple mail accounts that requires opening and closing Outlook throughout the day to read the mail.

That would be a 1 or 2 since you are just switching accounts.

Why don't you have the accounts in one profile?

[juliamccorben]

Originally Posted by Slipstick

That would be a 1 or 2 since you are just switching accounts.

Why don't you have the accounts in one profile?

Pretty much the same, open 24/7 and reboots every 24h

[TomTheToolman]

I open Outlook first thing in the morning and leave it open all day. I only close Outlook at the end of the day so that my automatic backup (using XXCopy) can back up all the PST files to my backup server during the night. So I chose the 24/7 vote.

[salsaboduk]

[QUOTE=Slipstick;74247]Following last week's issue of EMO, Larry had this to say:

"re the "create OL item w/o opening OL" discussion-- I'd be interested to know the % of people who "use" OL but do not have it opened, say, 100% of the time. I find it hard to believe that resources still would prevent users from basically having OL open 24/7--that's what I do-- "

I would just like to say that as a developer I have to run a VM on my desktop PC to develop for SharePoint which requires a minimum of 2GB RAM. I then need to run other applications on my desktop PC for debugging, monitoring etc. Unfortunately I am stuck with 32-bit Windows XP for my host operating system (corporate policy) so can only access 3.25GB RAM total. Under these conditions the resources used by outlook do become a significant factor in machine speed due to swap file usage. Please do not make assumptions about other peoples working environments, based on your own.