Reviews of Microsoft SNARF

1. 
   slushdot

   Reviewing 1.7.005 (Mar 31, 2006)

   thundercats, THUNDERcats, THUNDERCATS, HOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
2. 
   kerryg

   Reviewing 1.7.004 (Dec 7, 2005)

   SNARF is not for everyone. Not everyone wants to see their email in the same way. For ME, this is almost ideal. Where other productivity programs screw with your Outlook rules and folders, SNARF is simply a "view" into Outlook so that at a glance you can see incoming messages based on a relevancy rule that you have some control over. FOR ME, this looks like the type of tool I have been looking for.
3. 
   uberfly

   Reviewing 1.7.004 (Dec 3, 2005)

   I really like it. Will be a nice addition to everyday use of Outlook. Hopefully it will continue to be improved at a decent pace. One more review: ZenWarrior - you're a retard. Your mom shouldn't let you play on her computer.
4. 
   ghammer

   Reviewing 1.7.004 (Dec 2, 2005)

   Actually I'd give it a 4, but offsetting morons who rate without knowing what they are rating or why.
   
   Very nicely done.
   For those who say "GMail" did this.
   Nope, GMail requires you to setup labels, mark email, etc.
   
   This simply does it for you. And finds related messages.
   
   And, works with Outlook, which is unrelated to GMail.
   
   Not everyone wants to have a public email service.
5. 
   spiked

   Reviewing 1.7.004 (Dec 2, 2005)

   I think people should be free to hate Microsoft if they want, but it's pretty dumb to criticize a program without actually trying it first. SNARF is nothing like Gmail Labels. For 8 years, Outlook has had "Categories" which are exactly like Gmail Labels. The problem is that the user must do something in order to benefit from Categories or Labels (specifically: define Labels then assign them to messages; at least Outlook comes with a few predefined, common Categories so it's actually easier to use Categories in Outlook but the vast majority of people are simply too busy/lazy to assign Categories or Labels to messages). Imagine a spelling checker that comes with a totally empty dictionary. Nobody would have the patience to train it with 20,000+ words before it started to become useful.
   
   SNARF is a start toward having Outlook organize messages without any user involvement up front. Like a spellchecker, it does allow users to customize and adjust later, but it should be useful without any user configuration.
   
   This version, however, didn't help me much. SNARF's intelligence is based on looking at senders and your history with those senders. So if you receive a new message from somebody that you have historically replied to, and if you have historically replied quickly, then SNARF assumes that you probably want to reply quickly to this new message. For some people in some situations, this will work really well. For others, not so well. For example, if you play Fantasy Football with business associates such that you receive emails about player trades that you respond quickly to, but also work-related messages that may take longer to respond to (or involve offline responses like meetings) then SNARF cannot distinguish between your two separate relationships with the same sender.
   
   Shrekmachine, "indexing" in the context of SNARF is very different from the indexing done by Windows Desktop Search, Lookout, Google Desktop Search, X1/Yahoo Desktop Search, etc. SNARF does not index the full text of messages, so its index is a fraction of the size of indexes created by those other programs. It doesn't need the full text because it doesn't offer any searching, nor does it filter/score based on message content. Another difference is that SNARF is written as a MAPI client rather than an Outlook add-in. Therefore, you don't have to have Outlook itself running for SNARF to index. The downside is that SNARF automatically selects your primary MAPI profile. This is fine for 99.999% of Outlook users because they only have one MAPI profile. Since I have multiple profiles (each one containing multiple accounts), SNARF gets confused and the indexing gets screwed up unless I make sure to open Outlook before SNARF, in order to force SNARF to see my desired (non-default) profile.

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