PIM Add-ons
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Considering how many Outlook users are out there, I do not think that there is really any question that there are more add-ons for this specific PIM (personal information manager) than most. Yet at the same time, I have to ask - do we really need to add on more “stuff” to something so critical? The reason I ask is that speaking for myself, my PIM is my lifeline. I used to use Outlook and then onto Evolution. Both were pretty good PIMs, both had bugs from release to release however. So adding more stuff to the application simply does not do anything for me.
In response, I myself have been looking into making better use of Google’s offerings and I have to say, it’s just not there yet. While it is great for collecting everything into one box, even to the extent of providing labels. Seeing Google calendar lacking tasks and Gmail lacking read receipts is just something that is not working for me personally.
What say you? Can you seriously opt for Google apps in lieu of your existing PIM? I’d suggest trying it for a week - those of us living in an Exchange world tend to find it more difficult that initially expected.
2 Comments
Ulf
May 6th, 2008
at 1:25am
The two points mentioned are no issue for me. The missing tasks can be replaced by “Remember the Milk” and the great firefox plugin. The tasks are nicely integrated into gmail with this.
The missing “read receipt” is no issue for me as well. The read receipt has always been optional from the reads side, so it’s on the readers mercy to send it or ignore it. A lot of people even see it as a privacy problem.
crunchygeek
May 7th, 2008
at 9:59am
Matt: as one who lives in both the google apps world (personal) and the exchange world (work..not my choice), I find the exchange world much more cumbersome than the google apps world. In addition, if I’m not on MY computer at work, then I can’t see work related stuff. I support users who are in the far east at times. My gmail account enables me to support those users in something approximating real time (because of web-based email and google chat), not requiring me to play “email-tag” with them. I don’t need read-receipts, so that is not an issue for me. I will agree with you that google calendar could greatly improve itself with some kind of task management. I would suggest that any world other than the one you get used to will be, as you say, “more difficult than originally expected.”