e-mail

I use Outlook for managing tasks, contacts, mail and schedules. The new 2003 version is a vast improvement, at least in look and feel. The folder management is revised to split the window on the left to "favorite folders" and "all folders." Folders are a great way to organize and store emails, so this is a welcome change.

Then, the mail is organized by "today", "yesterday", and then the days of the week and back weeks. This helps to organize and trim out the inbox, which can get cluttered. For this attractive new feature alone, it's worth upgrading.

The look of the user interface is consistent with Windows XP, with the snazzy shaded bars. Nice to work with. Other improvements --the calendar also has been expanded, and tasks and contacts have new features, too. For example, the mail reading pane is larger, less scrolling required (yay!) and you can organize messages by subject thread to delete an entire series. Pretty cool.

If you are a dedicated Outlook user, the upgrade is well worth it, in my opinion.

I like the new layout of the panes in the Outlook 2003 window but is it worth the price of the upgrade? Probably not.
I have run into a few problems since I first rated this product.
I read a couple reviews of the Office 2003 upgrade and found that others felt the Outlook 2003 upgrade is the only part of the new Office suite that is worth the cost and hassle to upgrade. I decide to take their advice (and save $) and only upgrade OL.
Two problems have arisen since then.
1. The Office Shortcut bar is no longer a part of the Office suite. This is a great disappointment to me because this is one of the great efficiency tools that Windows has to offer. Luckily, Office XP is still installed as Word/Excel/PowerPoint so I still have the bar but the buttons which applied to OL 2003 are no longer available. If you are dependent on this feature as I have become, don't upgrade the full suite or it will disappear.
2. Because of the conflicting versions of the Office suite that I am using, there isn't full functionality between the programs anymore. For example, I can no longer send the body of a Word/Excel document as the body of an email by simply clicking the "E-mail" on the toolbar in the application. This is more trivial than the first issue.

Generally good, but two bugs remain from before:
1) Outlook PCS, which offers the only hope of exchanging with a PDA contact date organized into subfolders, is so buggy as to be unusable. A little effort by MS could make it great.
2) Appointments still get totally screwed up if you change time zones on the computer. Have to work around by pretending that you're in your home time zone when you travel, but just change the clock time.