> I have grave doubts as to whether users of a mail client will pay $30 for an add-on to improve the indigenous search, no matter how much better it is. People sometimes pay for additional functionality that they deem necessary, especially in specialised industries, but rarely for just an improvement of a built-in function. Witness the sudden death of any software competing with something newly built into an OS, even if it was superior.
I haven't used outlook in a few years, but when I was forced to use it, their search functionality was horrible and never got better. It's even worse if you have lots of mail in archives. I found it faster to just export the whole archive into the general purpose mbox format and use other mail clients to search for stuff. I'm guessing it's not as useful for individuals since they already use GMail or Yahoo Mail, but I'm sure companies who are reliant on Outlook will eat it up. $30 per seat at most companies is chump change when you consider the per seat license of Outlook is $300 and the damn Aeron chair they sit in is $1500.
> I am assuming Xobni offers a lot more than simply search right? If it's only search... what's there to stop Microsoft from building a better built-in search tool for Outlook? I often hear great things about Xobni, but I never got to try it due to I use a Mac. So could someone enlighten me on what else do they offer? Because it seems search is only feature I hear about...
I can't remember the name of the company, but there was another company that created a better search for Outlook, Microsoft bought them out, made the better search crappy again.
So my guess is that Microsoft has no incentive to make search good on desktops. Maybe in the future they'll buy out Xobni and then destroy their product so that Outlook search stays crappy.
EDIT: Why do users keep deleting their posts? that last post was written by Frocer.
I deleted my post because I thought it came across overly negative. I don't want to discourage people or sound like some grumpy douchebag. It's true I have my doubts about the market segment, but don't want to just pour cynicism on everything I see. So I deleted my post, too late!
By the way, Aerons are not the default chair at most companies , and I doubt Outlook costs $300 per seat. Search does suck though; I just didn't think it sucked enough to make it worth the bother. The founder says he's had 2 million downloads, though, so what do I know.
