Friday, October 22, 2010
Productivity Power Tools for Visual Studio 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Resharper Aids With Localizing Code
Monday, October 4, 2010
Looking At Thunderbird and Outlook as Gmail Clients
We compared Outlook 2010 + Google Apps Sync to Thunderbird 3.1.4 + Gmail Conversation View 1.2.4 + Google Contacts 0.6.33 + Lightening 1.0b2 + Provider for Google Calendar 0.7.1.
Both give you synchronized Gmail, Contacts and Cal in Outlook and Thunderbird respectively. The Thunderbird combo is better for a bunch of reasons including:
- Synching is almost instantaneous over broadband. Google Apps Sync for Outlook is painfully slow. If you get a lot of email it can easily take a couple of minutes waiting for the Google service to let you read new email - unless you leave Outlook running 24/7. That's a Google problem.
- MUCH better threaded view in the "reading pane". That's an Outlook problem.
- Thunderbird gives you more control over IMAP folder subscriptions if you care.
Of course none of this applies to you if you don't mind using a web page to use Gmail. I find using a desktop client like Thunderbird gives me a nice side-by-side treatment of the inbox contents and the conversation thread in a reading pane. The web UI makes you scroll up and down.
Google combines mail, cal and contacts synch into one plug-in, Google Apps Synch for Outlook. Using Thunderbird you have to install separate add-ons for these functions.