I was reading the post of Peter, and tried, without testing to compare the Outlook Tool of Peter Kalmström with another Outlook Tool developed by Sylvain Nawrocki of France (see http://www.s3ven.freesurf.fr/index.php?l=EN&menuid=2c).

Strong Point of the Kalmström tool: when you click on an e-mail you can see if the contact is on-line!

Strong Point of the Nawrocki tool: if wanted, you can put the Skype Username in a personal Outlook field!

Equal: in both you can call a Skype username who isn't in the Skype contact list!
Equal (i guess): when clicking on an Outlook contact (in the address book)you can see the user status of the Skype Constact.

There are other similarities, and from what i read the tool of Kalmström has more features than the Nawrocky tool.

For the time being, i stick to the Nawrocki tool for 2 reasons:
1. it fits my needs
2. i like what the guy is doing: developing free add-ons without much economical interest!

See his new "ST" or "Skype Tools": it is still very beta (i tested it yesterday and today) and permits for the time being only personalised ring tones for your contacts! Only for advanced users now, because i had (have) some problems!

Competition can go on!

Skype for Outlook, Skype for Internet Explorer.

So where's Skype for Firefox and Skype for Thunderbird?

Hi Jean,
If you look in the Radio Phone field of a contact you'll see that there is the skype name of the contact stored. Not sure if this is what you've meant when you said it was missing.
Regards,
Peter

Hey Julian!

From what I understand those products are not considered "strategic" by Skype. (Smile)

Thanks for dropping by again... Bill

You're aiming at the wrong user base. You should be going for the early adopters, like Firefox and Thunderbird users. Google have figured this one out, why haven't Skype?

Alan, I agree with you. Firefox visitors and IE visitors to Skype Journal are even. Amongst this community Firefox appears to have already won... and if not yet will soon. The Outlook plug-in is targeted conceptually (i believe) at making some form of corporate demonstration. Otherwise why do it. It's a misguided priority. I'd prefer to have voicemail fixed.

Im my machine this toobar made Outlook EXTREMELY slow.

I took it off and installed again, but still got a slow machine as a result.

Anyone else with this problem:

I have also been a beta tester of Skype for Outlook over the past couple of months. Peter covers all the features quite well.

Effectively it turns Outlook into a presence "überclient" since one can now initiate all Skype-related activity (status check, chat, phone calls, etc.) from Outlook without reverting to the Skype client. All that is left as unique uses for the Skype client are to report session histories and the status of your various Skype accounts (SkypeOut, VM, SkypeIn).

Skype for Outlook has become a critical tool for my Skype activity.

(BTW, part of my testing involved its compatibility when using other Outlook plug-ins such as Plaxo, the Lookout search tool and some business communications utilities that access Outlook Contacts for contact information; the compatibility with these plug-ins is now there.)

Hey Peter,
I did not say the field was missing in the Kalmström tool, I said that you can choose any field or create a new one with the Nawrocky tool!

By the way ... Sylvain Nawrocky should correct one small disadavantage of his tool: the position of the toolbar is NOT saved! I have each time again to reposition it when i leave and restart Outlook!

Regards,

Jean

After trying this with my Outlook install since it was available, I removed it today. I'd had more crashes on my outlook than ever before. It locked up my Norton and Skype, requiring a reboot. It may just be that my "number" of buddies is too many. I don't know. However, my system responds and feels better now it is gone.

I installed outlook toolbar, on a win xp home, professional and a windows 2000. on all system, my outlook has turned extremely slow... any particular reason??

Having used an early (beta 2 years ago) version of Peter Kalmstrom's outlook toolbar for Skype, I had high hopes for the release candidate... but alas, had to uninstall, too slowwww, not sure why... I have over 5000 contacts, and that may be one issue. I'd like to hear from Skype on this, Hello Peter?
tx
Jean-Baptiste Monnier

Is anyone experiencing error issues with
Outlook 2003 and the Skype toolbar?
I have been using it on my [WIN XP PRO] labtop and have been using skype (now beta2.5) for over 18 months and like the toolbar since I am still using mail regularly. Any ideas on how I can improve
performance and avoid error messages?
thanks for your input.

Um, *some* companies are still reliant on email? What world do you live in, anyway? The assertions in this blog entry that email is somehow a also-ran antiquated technology made me laugh out loud. Please, I know you're drinking the Skype KoolAid to be able to write this blog for them, but please, be at least somewhat realistic. Funny, funny stuff.

Well, I think you should always have up to date email backups. I used to do it manually by saving the .dbx files, until I found Outlook Express Backup Genie that does it automatically at regular times.

I choused it over other because it can work with both MS Outlook and Outlook Express

Guten Tag!!!
Becoming A Counselor,

Hru... :-)

I installed the Skype Toolbar for Outlook, and like other users here, had to uninstall it immediately since it made Outlook *unbelievably* ssslowwww. I have a 3 GHz Pentium 4 with 1Gb of RAM and a fast SATA hard drive; 336 Outlook contacts.

It takes a very long time to starting Outlook application after installing Skype Toolbar for Outlook on my computer.