They shoot horses … why not software ?

29. May 2008 by admin.

If a race horse breaks a leg, they usually want to end its misery as quickly as possible.  It’s considered the more humane act. With the possible exception of Barbaro and a few others, that’s what people have done for hundreds of years.

I recently had to “put down” a piece of beta software that was broken. It was the most humane thing to do, except it was MY misery I wanted to end as quickly as possible.

This software started out with all of the promise of a fiery young colt and except for a few maddening bugs, delivered on that promise.

The software I am talking about is called Xobni (inbox spelled backwards). It is an Outlook add-in that performs many useful functions. While the major thrust is indexing your emails, it also provides a lot of
useful and a few not so useful statistics.  Want to find a specific email, just enter anything you can remember about it and Xobni will find it quickly and without too much strain on the old resources.

Want to know who sends you the most mail, or who you send the most mail to?  How about how quickly you reply to certain people, or how quickly they replay to you?  There’s all kinds of nice functionality.  And did I mention that Xobni (at least the beta version) is free?  Navigate to http://www.xobni.com for the download.

So, why am I singing its praises right after uninstalling it?  Not everyone has the same needs.  For many people, Xobni would be just great, and the price is right.  Nada !

The problem I experienced was that Outlook wouldn’t close correctly… In fact, most times it really didn’t close at all. I would close Outlook, it would appear to close;  the display would disappear from the screen, but Outlook,WinWord, and  Xobni would remain open.  I would have to go into task manager and close each file manually.  Sometimes there would be multiple instances of Outlook open, but hidden.

This wasn’t really a deal-breaker for me at first… a little inconvenient for sure, but as I said, it was a beta version, it provided very useful functionality, and it was free!

The turning point for me was during a PowerPoint presentation in front of several decision makers at a company I wanted to get on-board.  My slides were projected on a large screen in the front of the room and everything was going just fine, when suddenly a piece of “male enhancement” SPAM popped up in the lower right corner, followed by several pieces of personal email, AND a message from the CEO of a company that was in direct competition with my audience. Outlook was still functioning… albeit hidden, pulling down mail from the POP3 server. What a fiasco !

So, I uninstalled it that night.  As I mentioned, it was a beta version, and in all fairness I must also mention that the un-install routine called up an automatic connection to the Xobni web site.  Once there, I was presented with a survey asking why I uninstalled and mentioning that corrections were being made all the time and that a newer version may already be available.   I miss the program a lot, and may well try it again later.

You, dear reader must make up your own mine.

Good luck and good networking.

From way down in the trenches…. I’m Tom

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Posted in Beta Versions, Software, Troubleshooting, Computers | No Comments »