I have been using Microsoft Outlook as my email client since 1997. I started off using Outlook 97 which really was a dog. At the time I used Outlook Express like a lot of people did since it came free with Win95.

Soon after that I downloaded Outlook 98 which was much much better than Outlook 97, since then I have used every version as it was released. Recently I was a beta tester for Outlook 2007, just as an aside, I liked Office 2007 quite a bit, but at this time I just see no reason to upgrade from Office 2003 to Office 2007.

This particular Outlook version I am using has email as far back as June 6, 2002. As a result of this the Outlook data file (.pst file) takes up over 2 gig of space on the hard drive. This is absurd, I need to delete things!

I try to communicate via email if at all possible for many reasons, I can be more clear and to the point in email, I do a LOT of my work late at night when phone calls are unacceptable and I like to have a “paper trail” of correspondence. As a rule when trying to solve multiple problems I prefer to send out individual emails for each problem, this allows me to track what has and has not been done. Obviously if someone has 20 requests in their email, well, I will bend the rule and just send one email.

I am not here to say how bad AOL may or may not be. I know a lot of people use it for their email address and have had the same address for years and years and are very happy with AOL.

However, in this day and age I just do not see the need to use AOL as your business address, it just does not make that much sense. Which looks better, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ? Obviously the second address just seems more business like.

One of the most common questions we get is how to setup Outlook, so we made up this quick tutorial.