More Outlook 2003 Adjustments for Speed

1. Disable Person Names Smart Tag
2. Remove the many sites in Restricted Sites (IE settings) put there by SpywareBlaster or a similar utility, and adjust that zone to disable the new-in-IE7 phishing and pop-up filters. Outlook 2003 and IE7 don't have security controls that work well together. If everything else in Restricted Sites is disabled, the pop-up and phishing filters are irrelevant, and while browsing with IE7, the Internet Zone will be applied always because no sites are specified in Restricted Sites. Make sure Firefox is your default browser, anyway.
   
3. Disable add-ins and extensions you don't use
   
4. Quit Outlook and rename frmcache.dat in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\FORMS to frmcache.old
   

Problems Transferring Files to MP3 Player Solved

Yahoo! Music Jukebox would freeze when synchronizing a playlist to my Sansa Connect (Amazon) player. I reinstalled YMJ and even tried other programs, such as MediaMonkey, Windows Media Player, and Winamp. However, I think that the special features and tie-ins with Yahoo! Music make YMJ the most reliable option (sad as that may be). I found, however, that the problems were with the MTP protocol that was part of the installation of WMP 11. Reinstalling WMP 11 fixed the problems transferring music with YMJ to the Sansa.

Some Free Utilities I Have Found Useful Lately

Instead of overloading the list in the sidebar of this page, I'd like to highlight some free utilities that I have found to be very useful lately:

• BitDefender Free Edition v10 - Antivirus
• ClamWin - Antivirus (for the Outlook module)
• AutoHotKey - Automation and Hot Keys
  
• Using this, I have remapped CapsLock to minimize the current window, and I've dedicated keys to close windows and open a new email message (mailto:)

• Taskbar Shuffle - Rearrange and Quickly Close Buttons on the Taskbar
• Copernic Desktop Search - Excellent Search Replacement for Outlook 2003, Good for IM logs (PS, I recommend Pidgin with the Aero theme)
  
• Glary Registry Repair - repairs registry errors without causing new problems, unlike outdated versions of RegSeeker and EasyCleaner
• General Tweaks from Kellys Korner

Some other free software that I've come to greatly appreciate lately are Audacity 1.3 Beta (the chains are really helpful for cleaning up podcasts), and AbiWord for simpler word processing without the UI weirdness of Word (but still including grammar checking!). Even though I have Microsoft Word 2003 installed, I use AbiWord as the default program for .doc files, and I find it faster and easier.

In an upcoming post, I'll highlight my favorite Firefox extensions.