Subject: Outlook 2007 - So slow I think I might lose my job !!

[Ryan Masanz]

I am about to give up. I do not know what to do.

I have a 100 user exchange 2003 server. CPU idle most of the day, gigs of
memory free, been running for years. Updated to Outlook 2007 through most
of the company, and things seemed fine at first. However, the rage of my
users has been growing. I really *really* dont want to go back to 2003,
but our users have large mailboxes, rougthly 5 GB+. We have some that are
over 10 GBs. Outlook 2003 had NO problems with this, it worked fine.
Outlook 2007 is a disaster, terribly slow, just clicking between emails
results in 10 second waits, typing randomly delayed and switching folders
you can go get a cup of coffee and come back in time for your mail.

I have been trying to figure out what could be the problem, it certainly
doesnt seem server related, it runs in Cached mode. Flipping through email
should not result in any network traffic (especially read email). There is
just lag, constant lag for half of my users. I only have 2.7 GBs of mail,
and I have no issues. After 5 GB though, problems crop up, over 7 GB its
terrible, around 10, just use web mail at this point.

The machines these are on are either Vista (SP1) or XP. The machines are
Dell Optiplex systems, 2 GB Ram, fast drives, most less than 1 year old.

Office is SP1

Would upgrading to Exchange 2007 help? I do not think so as the server is
idle most of the day.
What can I do? Is my answer just delete 8 gigs of your important mail?

I see countless articles about this on the web, but no fix, why?

 

[Phillip Drummond]

first of all, 5-10GB mailboxes? thats ABSURD and even MS will tell you to
expect problems. first order of business for you is to get your users to
archive their mail, get your mailboxes down to a normal size (most
corporations will have a 300-500MB store for normal users and MAYBE a 1GB
store for execs). and if youre users are in the office and network
congestion isnt an issue (hasnt been since the late 80's if we're being
honest) then dont use cached mode. ill bet that your users with normal size
mailboxes not using cached mode have no problems at all