There's a reason why I'm cautious towards Outlook add-ons like Newsgator and Attensa, it seems that whenever I wade into these waters I come out cold, wet, and tired. I gave Attensa a good review when I initially installed it, primarily because it was really fast and unobtrusive, however after using it for a couple of weeks I uninstalled it today. I was experinecing a frustrating slowdown in Outlook where the app wouldn't respond for up to 2 minutes, and in addition to that problem I was getting a userinit.exe memory problem. I don't think that Attensa is a poorly written app, but I have come to the conclusion that Outlook is a poor application for layering on 3rd party extensions. Never again.
« CRM Lowdown | Main | Cambridge Gets Chinese GPS Patent »
Sep 12, 2005
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83420c2cc53ef00d8345733b453ef
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Attensa update:
Comments
Verify your Comment
Previewing your Comment
This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.
Your comment could not be posted. Error type:
Your comment has been posted. Post another comment
As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.
Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.
So I'm not alone ... I actually installed Attensa after inspired by your post, and loved it.. until it stopped doing any updates today. Now that I look back, it's been skipping posts for days.
I can't report on the slowdown, I've been experiencing that on Outlook even without Attensa.
No patience left for bug-tracking, testing .. uninstall, back to Bloglines :-(
Posted by: Zoli Erdos | Sep 15, 2005 at 05:42 PM
You imply that newsgator gives (or gave) the same problems. I have been using newsgator for many months now and have had no problems at all.
Posted by: Andrew | Sep 25, 2005 at 03:35 PM
Andrew,
This is the difficult part of software development, ensuring that the broad spectrum of users has the kind of experience that you have been seeing.
On a related note, Attensa did reach out to me to find out what issues I was having, and in the course of the conversation they said that they had in fact added a throttle to the control that interacts with Outlook. The goal was to improve responsiveness and stability in Outlook.
Posted by: jeff | Sep 25, 2005 at 07:14 PM
The throttle control is a good idea - or so I thought. Tried their new version for a while, minimizing the resources devoted to Attensa. Today I just rebooted for the third time: 100% CPU use, 98% of that by the Attensa Engine.
I guess I can't really complain, it is BETA, after all... but I don't have the time for this.
Game over.
Posted by: Zoli Erdos | Sep 26, 2005 at 03:28 PM