PCmag@Work (Small Business): Review – Xobni Microsoft Outlook Plugin
The only cons for this feature-extending Outlook plugin are the possibility of information overload and a slight performance hit. Price: $29 (free version available.)
“If you’re like most professionals working in Microsoft Office, you spend hours a day in Outlook, the touchstone of the modern professional work day, managing your e-mail, appointments, and contacts. But as indispensible as Outlook is, none of us are completely happy with it. That’s where Xobni (Free, $29.99 Plus version) comes in, a free Outlook plug-in that helps you search faster, communicate better, and just get more done. I have been using it for months and find it the best way to wade through mountains of e-mail and my cacophony of contacts.
Setting Up Xobni
With any Outlook plug-in, one concern is speed. Outlook is already a monster application, and adding more features seems like a good way to slow it down. Still, Xobni had remarkably little effect on Outlook on my Core 2 Duo laptop with 3GB of RAM running Windows 7. I wouldn’t run Xobni with anything less in terms of hardware, although the software will work with Outlook 2007 and Windows XP just fine. The app re-indexes once a day in the background and although it added a few seconds to Outlook’s start up time, I didn’t find it anything to be too concerned about.”