[jenny1978]

Hello

I am looking for some help if possible please on which software to buy.

I run a small office for my dad and we are currently running 2 laptops both on windows 7 and microsoft office outlook 2007.

Firstly outlook is terribly slow at times and always comes up not responding. I am not sure if upgrading to 2010 may help this.

My main issue is the calendar system. I need to have 3-4 different calendars for each of our advisors which I can do no problem with outlook. The problem is I need the other laptops to be able to view and makes changes to this calendar and I have not found a way to do this yet. We are also expanding and will have up to 4 laptops shortly and I need to connect to the network on all of them and also be able to view diary on them.

Does anyone know of any good software they could recommend that would do the job for me.

Kind Regards

Jennifer

[smax013]

jenny1978, on 09 October 2011 - 01:41 PM, said:

Hello

I am looking for some help if possible please on which software to buy.

I run a small office for my dad and we are currently running 2 laptops both on windows 7 and microsoft office outlook 2007.

Firstly outlook is terribly slow at times and always comes up not responding. I am not sure if upgrading to 2010 may help this.

My main issue is the calendar system. I need to have 3-4 different calendars for each of our advisors which I can do no problem with outlook. The problem is I need the other laptops to be able to view and makes changes to this calendar and I have not found a way to do this yet. We are also expanding and will have up to 4 laptops shortly and I need to connect to the network on all of them and also be able to view diary on them.

Does anyone know of any good software they could recommend that would do the job for me.

Kind Regards

Jennifer

I believe to share calendars in Outlook that you need to be running a MS Exchange server, but I could be wrong.

The other option would be to use Google Calendar.

You might be able to go the "free" route by just having Gmail accounts for everyone, but you would first want to check Google's TOS as they may not permit "business use" for free Gmail/Calendar accounts. Assuming that you cannot, you would need to do a "Google Apps Business account". Here is pricing:

http://www.google.co...s/features.html

This route would also allow you to turn off ads.

And Google does have a Outlook syncing application/tool, so you could then access all the Google Calendars in Outlook as well as on the web.

[Tunz]

Quote

I believe to share calendars in Outlook that you need to be running a MS Exchange server, but I could be wrong.

Yes, the problem is that without MS Exchange server, only one computer at a time can access an Outlook PST file, so third party software solutions are impractical.
The only other alternative to Google Apps is a hosted MS Exchange server, like that of 1and1.com.
http://order.1and1.c...9F50.TCpfix243a
Google offers a lot of excellent solutions, but it seems that everything is always in flux there, and the changes can be hard to keep up with.
I have no experience with Google support but I can say that 1and1 support is quite good. They host several of my initiatives and problems are minimal.

[bullbash]

Hi, you may want to take a look at the business collaboration tool for (non)programmers called Datalator at
FancyData.com. Looks like it might fit your requirements pretty well.