Sunday, July 08, 2007

The Great Defrag Shootout XVIII: Outlook Accelerator 2.0

Time for a slight diversion from complete hard drive defragmentation: Outlook Accelerator only defragments the data files for Microsoft Outlook. I originally thought it optimised the contents of the Outlook PST file, but I was mistaken.
Because the software is an add-in to Outlook, it "knows" where the data files are. Outlook data files are not easy to find, and if you get a lot of messages the file grows regularly, so it is easy for it to become fragmented. Outlook Accelerator claims to defragment these files on a regular basis. There are various options available to determine how often they should be defragmented.
It's not clear to me whether DefragMentor Software is still operational, as the web site does not appear to have been updated since June 2004. Their e-commerce facility works, but my attempts to contact technical support have failed. I paid the $19.95 required to test the product, but when I encountered a problem and contacted them I received no reply.
The problem I encountered was that the program doesn't appear to do anything, and does not report when the defrag is complete, or how far it has progressed. I also found that if I quit Outlook and then tried to re-load it, nothing would happen. I had to terminate the "OUTLOOK.EXE" process in Task Manager before I could start Outlook again. I have been unable to arrange a refund and have uninstalled the product. I think it's overpriced at $19.95, even if it worked correctly. This was definitely a bad buy.

The Great Defrag Shootout: Part I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | VIII | IX | X | XI | XII | XIII | XIV | XV | XVI | XVII | XVIII | XIX | XX | XXI | XXII | XXIII | XXIV | XXV | XXVI | XXVII | XXVIII | XXIX| winner | all | why

No comments: