Plaxo Would Be Great…. If It Actually Worked

The idea behind the Plaxo 3.0 (Beta) is one that has value – a hub that syncs all of your online address books, calendars etc.

However, it only works sometimes. By downloading the provided software for your client, you can sync with Outlook and Thunderbird (contacts only), but with Web properties, it’s really hit or miss.

My Windows Live Hotmail sync point seems to work fine almost all of the time, but the Google sync point, which only syncs calendar and contacts (one way), does work half the time, and my Yahoo sync point has been in the process of synchronizing for 15 hours now. The only sync points that are 100% reliable are the desktop mail clients.

I realize the nature of Web 2.0 services are that they are perpetually in beta, but in this case, one the core features simply isn’t anywhere near reliable in a production environment. That’s more like alpha to me.

Firefox awesome, Thunderbird so not

Despite the success of Firefox and the improvements in 3.0, I’m not on the “Mozilla can do no wrong bandwagon”. Not only is Thunderbird, its mail client, nowhere near an Outlook killer yet, but it has problems that most mail clients solved years ago.

Regardless of version I’ve tried for Windows, either right on the desktop or the portable version, it’s taken 10 minutes to boot and then freezes or crashes. My searches for the the solution to the problem have found that Thunderbird needs you to compact folders regularly and that these slowdowns are common to many users.

As a user, I should not have to worry about this. For all the complaints that Microsoft makes bloatware, Outlook 2003 starts in a millisecond and never slows down for me.

I would love to be a Thunderbird user, but right now it’s barely a good beta product, let alone production environment software.