Hmm – I’m always happy to hear well-reasoned criticism of the magazine, but if you look at the issue right now as an example then you could hardly accuse us of rehashing old ideas. We work damn hard to get new ideas out there, and I think the guide to IT for children – timed for the summer holidays, note – is an excellent example.

The second article, “Why bother with 64-bit Windows?” is the first time we’ve covered this topic in-depth (and note it’s backed up by proper benchmarks), and is timed to co-incide with the fact lots of people are thinking about the upgrade to Windows 7.

Then we’ve got the Britain’s Top 10 Tech Celebs – which to my knowledge has never been done before.

Finally, in PC Pro Business, we’ve got Steve Cassidy’s ten rules of building a small business network. Again, not something I’ve actually seen anywhere before.

Obviously, sometimes we will revisit old favourites that need to be updated, but we’ll never “rehash” them but work out a new angle and write them from scratch.

Thanks GillsMan. I’m still forming my opinion of the conversation view – first impressions are that it’s an annoyance rather than a help – but I want to use it for a while before committing to this.

In terms of how it works – you can right-click on a message and select Ignore. From that point on, all the messages related to that conversation are automatically deleted (though still accessible in Deleted Items).

You can then go into Deleted Items and right-click on the message to deactivate the “ignore” command.

Hi Katie – the simple answer to your question is no, no, no, no and no – at least on first look for any of those features. Sorry!

Clearly MS thinks tags are unnecessary when there are so many categories to play around with, and it’s stuck with the odd transparency effect for multiple calendar views (so you can “see through” to secondary calendars).

I’ve always used signatures for the autotext feature you mention – surely far easier than trying to remember multiple keyboard shortcuts? Not so sure about the mailing list feature (I’ll have to try this later) but definitely no to comments on emails.

Have you used OneNote though? Very good for dealing with projects like going through CVs, and Outlook can quickly create a new entry in OneNote. So you’d create a “CVs for writer” section and then be able to make searchable notes on each candidate.

Sounds like a bit sledgehammer to break a nut, but effective.

Does the conversation view actually thread the conversation properly? I’ve not been able to get a clear answer on it so far.

Does it properly thread, so you can see which reply goes with which e-mail and when a conversation branches, the sub-threads of the conversation are correctly linked to each other, or does it just stuff the whole conversation under a single heading?

This is one of the things I loved with the old mail clients (KMail, NacCIS etc.), which were sorely missing from Outlook, Thunderbird and Apple Mail.

ok guys i need help i cant delete the messages in my inbox when i press the delete key all i get is a line across my msg i have right clicked on msge mostly done averything i think off

Tim, Thanks for the insight on Outlook 2010. I’m curious whether MS has taken any cues from Xobni, specifically the integration with social networks, and the displaying of contact info, previous e-mails, attachments, etc. for the sender whose message is currently selected.