My favourite Outlook-plugin, and the very reason that I dropped Thunderbird in favour of Outlook, Xobni, is now out of beta. The plugin adds social networking and search features to the email and contact organizer. I first looked at Xobni last year. Today Xobni is dropping the beta tab with the release of Xobni 1.7. Xobni’s webpage has also gotten an overhaul.

The new version doesn’t come with any shiny new features, but it it does have a number of improvements under the hood that let Xobni and Outlook work better together. For instance, Xobni loads faster, loads messages better due to caching, and users can control how often and how much of their email is indexed by the plugin. You can also decide whether Xobni will open every time you launch Outlook or if you want it to appear only when you want it.

I ran in to several problems trying to upgrade an existing version on my work computer. I guess the problems were related to me just quiting Outlook, and that I also had to end it’s background process. After ending the process, installation went smooth.

xobni-errors

Xobni continues to be available as a free download, but the company is working on a premium version that will be available this summer.