SkiingSixPack wrote:
Just do what I and many have done, just dump outlook and move everything to google (email, calendar, contacts) Once you get used to the browser-based email, calendar, and contacts... your life will be much easier...
IMHO, of course. Your mileage may vary.
If I do that I become completely dependent on Internet coverage. I live in an isolated area and while I have coverage at home it is not so good when I am out in the city. In addition when traveling I don't want to be dependent on slow Internet access. With Outlook I can download emails, leave the Internet and work on them and send the results the next time I am on.
There is another, more personal and perhaps irrational reason for not liking the cloud. I am old enough to remember taking punch cards to a central computer center and later working on dumb terminals. I was completely dependent, and at the mercy, of these cloud like central IT functions. When the PC came along in the early 80's it was liberating. Suddenly I was in charge and not dependent. I am reluctant to return to depending on the cloud.
In addition, one cannot trust large companies to work in one's interest. A great example is Google withdrawing its support of the synch program and causing me this trouble. Who knows what Google and its like have in store for us in the future. I suspect it is to make us absolutely dependent on them and then begin to charge exorbitantly high fees, much like cable TV.
Anyway, we are all different and will like different solutions.
