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

[ship]

Software:
- 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 hardware:

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

[END]

 

[CJM]

I would try somewhere like microsoft.public.outlook....

You are unlikely to get the best advice here...

 

[Roady [MVP]]

I would start with disabling add-ins especially your virus scanner
integrating with Outlook.

--
Robert Sparnaaij [MVP-Outlook]
Coauthor, Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003


-----
Software:
- 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 hardware:

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

[END]

 

[Agent_C]

I am looking for ways to SPEED UP Outlook!

Outlook 2003, by itself, is not a particularly resource intensive
application. If you simply add more power to the shields, you may be
disappointed in how little that, by itself, improves performance.

You should first determine where the choke point is.

I'd start by temporarily disabling all those rules and see what
improvement you get from that alone. If it's substantial, you may want
to consider whether you actually need that many riles and/or if you
could get by with less, or managing your mail differently.

Next, see what happens when you disable the feature in Norton that
scans incoming mail. It may speed things up considerably.

Once you have a handle on what's causing your performance issue, you
could make a more informed decision on what to do about it.

A_C

 

[Matt-the-Hoople]

Quoth ship in alt.www.webmaster

I am looking for ways to SPEED UP Outlook!

Start>Add/Remove Programs>Remove Outlook

then

Start>Add/Remove Programs>Add somethingelse

FI,

Opera has a great email client in it the DOESN'T USE FECKING M$WORD TO
READ/COMPOSE.

TheBat! DOESN'T USE FECKING M$WORD TO READ/COMPOSE.


Most everything else DOESN'T USE FECKING M$WORD TO READ/COMPOSE.


Therein lies your problem.

 

[Brian Tillman]

I would try somewhere like microsoft.public.outlook....

That's one of the newsgroups where the OP posted. Notice the headers?

 

[Brian Tillman]

Start>Add/Remove Programs>Remove Outlook

then

Start>Add/Remove Programs>Add somethingelse

How does that provide integrated calendaring/mail/task management/contact
management and allow mail merge?

Opera has a great email client in it the DOESN'T USE FECKING M$WORD TO
READ/COMPOSE.

Neither does Outlook (prior to 2007) if you don't specifically tell it to
use Word.

TheBat! DOESN'T USE FECKING M$WORD TO READ/COMPOSE.

Most everything else DOESN'T USE FECKING M$WORD TO READ/COMPOSE.

And neither does Outlook. Obviously you have never used the product. That
makes you a poor source for advice.

 

[Diane Poremsky]

outlook is very slow at downloading mail thanks to MAPI. Assuming you have
less than a gb, more ram might help, but not a lot - it generally is the
better investment though.

 

[Dab]

Turn off Cached mode (if you are connected to an Exchange server).

 

[Brian Tillman]

Turn off Cached mode (if you are connected to an Exchange server).

I'd disagree with this, in general. Cached Exchange mode enhances the
*apparent* performance of the User Interface because it can comminicate with
the Exchange server at a different rate that the user manipulates messages.
Messages in the cache already don't need to be otained from the server so
performance is improved. However, the OP didn't name his type of account,
so Cached Exchange mode may not even be applicable.

 

[z]

Software:
- 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.

 

[Pat Willener]

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.

 

[Concreteman]

Software:
- 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.

 

[Steven J. Sobol]

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 bastard child (in my opinion).

 

[ship]

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

 

[Roady [MVP]]

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


-----

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

 

[Agent_C]

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

 

[Brian Tillman]

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.

 

[ship]

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.

Unlikely because I am already using 3 different anti-virus programs
on 3 differnet machines, and they are ALL dog slow when Outlook
downloads!

Strangely Outlook almost never seems to take up much PROCESSOR
time - even when it's compacting! (which can take a while after you
delete fat attachments...). RAM doesnt seem very full.
And the hard disk doesnt SOUND like it's being thrashed...
So I'm at a loss to know where the bottleneck actually is.
But my PC has been compacting for the last 10 minutes and
yes CPU usage hasnt risen about 7-10%!


Ship
Shiperton Henethe

 

[ship]

Brian

Your eyes,
the sender, and the subject of the message should suffice.

Please explain

Ship
Shiperton Henethe