Xobni gets the review treatment at PC World: 93 out of 100
I know the Xobni review just appeared at PC World; then again, I had the inside track since I wrote it. 
We’ve extolled the virtues of this excellent add-in to Outlook before, but if you’re curious how a review of it reads in around 300 words, hop on over to PC World. I believe that many folks, both consumer and enterprise, can benefit greatly from the type of information Xobni provides in Outlook. I’m specifically thinking of features like the lightning-fast search, threaded conversation view and the network function that helps you find contact information you didn’t realize you had. Don’t forget that Xobni works with your local mail store in Outlook; as a result I can use it even though my mail service actually comes from Google’s IMAP offering. Xobni may take longer to index with IMAP e-mail than with POP or an Exchange server, but it works just as well.My standard disclosure applies: I’m paid a flat-fee from PC World for my submissions and make no more or less money if you read the article.
I just don’t agree. Xobni is very flashy and interesting to look at for a while, but I installed it and for the past week or more the pane has been minimized and off to the right, and I haven’t missed it at all.
The search is far too generic, can’t pinpoint searches, and all the stats and other stuff is just a distraction. I don’t give a rats behind about when someone is liable to answer my email… it’s an asynchronous format, the whole point is you fire off an email and they respond when they can.
Phone numbers? Well, sure… but rarely would I go to Xobni to find it. I suppose in some cases it might come in handy but pretty marginal again.
What does impress is how well it works, how quick it is, and those pieces. The Xobni project may yet give birth to something truly useful but the current product is pretty iffy once you get past the surface glitz.
Fair enough. Aside from making the search less generic, what would you add, remove or change to make it more useful to you?
I liked the search feature and the “networks” feature. Definetly useful for me (especially with group projects as school), but my computer was just bogged down with it.
I am running my email via exchange server (exchangelabs.com), on Vista with Outlook 2007, running on an Intel Centrino Gateway with a 1.6ghz processor and 1.25gb of ram. Best specs? No, but Outlook runs a hell of alot better without it. With a better computer Id probably check it out.
I’m not sure I have any brilliant insights into how to make it more useful for me personally, I’m afraid, I just know that currently it is a nice toy but in no way essential to my daily work.
I do enjoy some of its features, I should add. From a geeky point of view I guess there is some fun factor in finding out how many mails I have sent to a specific person, how they rank in the number of mails received and all that – and the list of files exchanged with a person can actually be useful if one is looking for an old attachment, come to think of it.
Essential, however, it most certainly is not.
I hear you and hey, not every application will be useful for every individual. I’ve found it to be a refreshing and easy way to get at information that’s in Outlook. The analytics of senders and recipients is more of an interesting feature, but less of a useful one. I like the “networking” for finding addresses I never thought to add to contacts, file attachment histories and threaded conversation view to quickly pinpoint information.
One of the key features I really like is the ability to immediately see and open all attachments from the sender.
It saves an enormous amount of time trying to find older files, that may have been sent hundreds of messages ago, especially when the attachment and the subject of the mail are different.
One improvement that would be ideal, would be the ability to select a number of attachments from the list at the same time and be able to save them.
One thing to keep in mind is that it does appear to be a bit of a hog at times. and while you may not notice it on most mainstream systems, it does noticeably slow down less powerful systems such as the Sony TZ Ultraportable.
Kevin – I agree with most of your comments. The big wins with Xobni for me are:
1 – Speed of search for any word, phrase name, etc
2 – finding those contacts and phone numbers you didn’t think to file
3 – looking at history of exchanged files
Like you say, I wish the analytics weren’t permanently displayed — it takes up too much room and the most valuable stuff get squeezed below the analytics.
I think it’s a great 1st rev add-on and I look forward the changes coming in the next major release.
I seem to recall reading that the major win for Xobni is having the API to install stuff into Outlook, as programming addons for it is a pain. If indeed that turns out to be true, that third parties may get access to said API to make responsive addons then Xobni is a good trial software that can point the way for more specialized stuff to access the guts of Outlook and its messages.
I guess we’ll see what happens.