To OWA or not to OWA...

[sawyl]

Slightly against my better judgement, I've decided to follow the path of least resistance by ditching my current email solution and give Outlook Web Access a whirl. My initial feelings are:

• it isn't nearly as horrible as I'd expected; certainly nothing like as bad as Outlook 2003
• the lack of proper regexps and booleans makes writing mail filters a total chore
• quoting is completely and utterly broken in a way that defies belief
• the shortcuts are horrible and I reserve the right to switch back to a console-driven client

It has also made me realise just how short of resources my desktop system is. It's been prone to bouts of swapping for a while, but in the last few days the problem has gone from acute to chronic: grindingly slow interactive response punctuated by periods of catatonia when it starts to thrash. Time, I think, to swap it for one of the no-longer-used and better specified application analyst machines from a few desks down.