just use the web interface. it's better anyways, and not at all slow, as you claim in this rant. the complainer said they checked their email from multiple devices & the web interface already...what's the compelling reason to keep using outlook?

contacts didn't sort in the order you sorted them in outlook on your phone? really? that's an issue or a dream feature?

The biggest problem Google Apps has is being fathered by Google.

Google and support are oxymorons. Google doesn't give two hoots and a holler about supporting customers.

Google has never cared about customers. Google never will care about customers.

Google search engine is the best in this universe.

Everything else that Google makes is not so great.

Google is still a one trick pony as 99% of revenue and 100% of profits are still tied to search and not Google Apps!

1. Synchronize domain emails
Not just "My Contacts". Sure this is some setting that someone in my company could set. The end result for us users is that I am forced to open a website to emai la new employee!
2. Support more than free/busy
Where's tentative and OOF? Those are in Outlook and Exchange for good reasons. Why aren't they in gmail? It hobbles those of us used to using real enterprise email software.
3. Outsource it
Google engineers are awful. The bugs I've seen after 1.5 years forced to use Google software are pathetic. Just last week, an update to a Google Sites page was lost. We know the update occurred because we hve the notification in our email, but Sites lost it! If you can't get that right, you can't be trusted with business data.
4. Free/busy in Outlook
I can't schedule in Outlook with free/busy status and without easyily locating conference rooms, etc.
5. Try using it!
Who at Google uses this product? Heard of dogfooding? Or is that an antiquated concept like "releasing non beta software" or respecting your users' privacy?
6. It crashes Outlook on startup
Windows 7 64-bit, Outloook 2007
See also my suggestion to not have Google engineers working on this software.

My experience with Google Apps Sync has been a great one actually. I use it to sync my Outlook with by Blackberry over the air. I upgraded to the Premium Google Apps just to make use of this feature and it does it better than any other sync tool out there.

Things I love :

* The BlackBerry sync client is excellent. Does contacts, multiple calendars and is set-and-forget.

* The Contacts > Duplicate Find and Merge feature in GMail fixed all my duplicates. Every other sync tool i have used has created duplicate contacts (Grrrr) but this is a good fix.

Things I dont like :

* I agree that having to start a new .PST file in Outlook is strange and seems unneccessary but its done now and i am using it.

I am the author of our outlook plugin. I have found that the Google Synch profile does not support the outlook interop library provided by Microsoft and consequently users with Google Sync Profile as their only email profile cannot use plugins written with that library very well or at all.

I think that moving to Google Apps is purely a money saving effort and not much more. It has less features than Microsoft Exchange and in general has hindered my productivity, so any money saved on managing my mailbox has been more than lost on having me be less productive.

Google App Sync is supposed to be a way to “bridge the gap” so that users can continue to use the tool they are familiar with, Outlook. However, Microsoft Outlook was built to run and work optimally in an Exchange environment, not a GMAIL environment, so no matter what Google does, they will have a very hard time keeping the two technologies in sync. A prime example is their lack of support for Windows Server 2007 64-bit, which has been GA for almost 6 months and in public Beta for over a year, not to mention Outlook 2010 which will be GA in a few months.

At the end of the day, Google App sync is just another technology that is inserted between you and your email, calendar and contacts. If I were to take the day or two it will take to downgrade my laptop to Windows 7 32-bit (which only address 3GB of the 4GB of my available memory), I would lose at least two days of productivity, which probably would pay for 10 years of running an Exchange mailbox.

As it is now, I think I will just try to manage by maintaining multiple clients to manage my mail, calendar, contacts and task list and hope that Google catches up and can deliver an App Sync client that works for me.

Just my two-cents.

At least for my company, Google has done irreparable harm to their reputation by overselling Google Apps Email. My issues are similar to the others stated here:

Bugs:
Windows 7 64 bit support for Sync - It is not good enough to just tell me that it is not supported and not provide even a tentative date for support. Like it or not it's going to be a primary operating system for a long time.

IMAP/Outlook Sync - Create a subfolder from Outlook using Sync and it will create a tag in your email like Inbox/Subfolder. Many widespread IMAP clients will choke on use of lower case in Inbox, so you have to then go to the website to change it to INBOX/Subfolder.

Support: The forums are nearly worthless as it is full of others such as myself, asking about a problem, with other users providing answers that are not solutions. Expect long delays in submitting issues to Google via the web. I also was duped by this phone support that does not seem to exist.

Outlook: The biggest disappointment is that even if the bugs were worked out, the way Google envisions Outlook integration is wholly different than Outlook-heavy users would want to see it. The bottom line is that if you are an Outlook/Exchange fan, there is nothing but pain on the Google Apps train:

Message Reply/Forward indicators are not synced with the server. If you are accustomed to using these indicators to manage your email, especially from multiple machines, you will be disappointed as they will not transfer from machine to machine as with Exchange. If you reply to a message from Machine 1, the message will only appear as read on Machine 2; the reply icon will only appear on the machine from which the message was replied. The sent message itself will be synced to each client though, and of course at the website.

Because the rear end of the email is based on threads and tags (instead of messages and folders), you have to pay particular attention before deleting a message as you may be deleting it from one of the subfolders in Outlook. There is no way to identify how many places a message might be from the Outlook interface

A minor point perhaps, but automated rules have to be put into the website, not from the Outlook client. The website support fairly simple rules for filtering email into folders or forwarding based on keywords, but advanced rules have to be built in the client and then only run when the client is on and attached to the network.

For me, the bottom line is that I made a horrible mistake moving our company to this product and am now heavy into seeking a Hosted Exchange provider to move us again.

Wow, personally I love Google Apps! I cannot say enough good things about it. I don't understand what this guys is saying about the web interface being slow, anyone who has used it knows it is lightning fast. The gmail interface is faster than Outlook running on a pc without 8 gigs of ram that's for sure. I run thunderbird with lightning to access my google apps account, also use the web interface, and i sync my iPhone. This solution is working great for our office. Many of our other employees use the outlook sync(I wouldn't dream of using outlook) and it works great for them. Best thing is how easily it also syncs with the iphone. Sure google has no support but honestly their service works so great (if you know how to use it) that I have never needed any support! Long Live Google!