NewsGator Inbox – Wrap up

So this will basically wrap up the NewsGator Inbox series. There are a couple of things to note. While this is an abundantly useful tool and provides many options in order to customize your experience the plug-in does have an affect on Outlook. As I have stated in many of the options reviews, when you run one of the options it will lock Outlook so you will not be able to use it. The timing for each of these varies depending on how much data is being transferred. For instance I noticed that when all of my subscriptions updated it would take considerably longer then if just a couple updated. I also noticed in my task manager that when NewsGator Inbox looked for updates the memory usage would jump up about 20,000-50,000K, which would also affect the speed of not only Outlook but other programs running on the computer at the same time. I have experienced some slowdowns that were significant across my system on both the Dell and the Gateway. In addition the startup time is increased because NewsGator Inbox is just another thing that Outlook has to open before you get at what you want….emails or posts.

I also found that the new Outlook tools that were being rolled out, like Microsoft Office Outlook Connector, tended to create some extra problems for NewsGator Inbox, not to mention for Outlook itself. This is one of the inherent risks of utilizing this type of plug-in; it is dependent on the creator (in this case Microsoft) of the program that it plugs into and will require updates on the same schedule. In this case when I receive the MS Office Outlook Connector in one of my MS updates I ended up having to remove it and the NewsGator Inbox. Then I went back to NewsGator and downloaded the NewsGator Inbox again. It appeared to work fine after that.

Another interesting note is that on the Gateway the way that I have my anti-virus configured the system tends to flip out when the NewsGator Inbox looks for updates. The system tray jumps all over the place and there are several alerts that are created. It seems that if you have the sensitivity set high for your mail client scans that it will pick up the URLs that are embedded in the posts and treat them as a threat. Since this would generate the same number of alerts as the number of new posts downloaded I decided to reconfigure my Antivirus software to a less sensitive setting.

I still would recommend this tool though. It is ideal for those who cannot, or do not want to go online to get the news feeds. It is also useful if you do not want to add another application to your PC. So it can really be handy in a work setting because it looks and feels just like Outlook, you do not have to open any other applications and you do not have to open a browser. I am sure it can be tracked by your company’s security team but it is probably a lot lower on the radar then internet usage and traffic.

Now that I have completed the review of NewsGator Inbox, I will move on to FeedDemon. I would like to get a few more reviews under my belt and then I will develop a rating system. Please feel free to provide feedback on what I have posted so far and anything else you would like to see.