Tis the season for bringing utilities and products out of beta; Yesterday I reported on PamConsult’s PamFax coming out of beta with the addition of scanning and printer driver support.. At nearly the same instant I received notification that Skype has made generally available version 1.1 of its Outlook e mail Toolbar, a tool which I use frequently for launching Skype and SkypeOut calls directly from Outlook.

The new features include:

• support for Outlook 2007.(the major one)
• improved startup performance (except the first date you log into a profile)
• changes to improve overall performance as an Outlook plug-in
  • for instance, selecting appointments is no longer supported
  • on demand analyzing of other mail recipients

To expand on the last comment: "When you create a conference, multichat etc from an mail the other recipients (apart from the sender) are analyzed when needed, not in advance."

Skype Toolbar Product Manager Peter Kalmstrom has more details here on the Skype for Business blog; he has additionally created an instructive screencast here.

I have been a member of the beta program for that utility by the past three months and can testify that the

new version has additionally eliminated one "nuisance bug" I was experiencing with the earlier version. Having followed the Outlook beta tryout group chat, I can plus testify that it went through some fairly rigorous and aggressive evaluating to ensure that it works with both Outlook "Internet" and Outlook "MS Exchange" and across VPN connections.

Also, someone raised the question whether that utility is competitive with Skylook. Skylook is a prime example of a developer who has found a market niche and addressed it. Whereas the Skype Outlook Toolbar certainly facilitates making Skype/SkypeOut calls, Skylook provides a tool for archiving all your conversations, whether voice or chat, into an Outlook folder for ready recall from within Outlook. As a aftermath Skylook is very useful as a Customer Relationship Management tool. Phil reports on a recent interview with Skylook Founder Jeremy Hague in Melbourne’s The Age.

Along with the Skype Browser Toolbar for Firefox, the Skype Outlook Toolbar, continues to be a major component of my "I don't dial phone numbers any more" campaign.

Tags: Skype, Skype Outlook Toolbar, Skylook, Peter Kalmstrom, Outlook 2007, SkypeOut

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Orginal post by Jim Courtney