Why use Google Apps Sync for Outlook to sync email?

Question

I currently use Outlook 2007 against an Exchange server for my email and will be moving to Google Apps. There are a number of ways to import your existing email and calendar entries into Google Apps Gmail (e.g. including the Google Apps Sync for Outlook tool), the Google Email Uploader, and copying messages using an IMAP client) so I'm covered on the import side.

I'm trying to understand the use cases for the Google Apps Sync for Outlook tool http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=23333 with respect to email and calendar entries. The description says it syncs your Outlook email and calendar items with Google Apps, but doesn't using Outlook as an IMAP client against Google Apps do the same?

Answer 1

IMAP does not cover calendar.

Answer 2

We have recently 'gone Google' and for the employees who still wish to use Microsoft Outlook they are using the Google Apps Sync for Outlook tool which works well but we have noticed that it does generate a lot of internet traffic. We only have 7 employees here and the amount of traffic was noticeable, particularly during the initial synchronisation and pulling down the most recent 1GB of emails.

I think my response is more of a "why wouldn't I use Google Apps Sync for Outlook!"

According to the documentation the Google Apps Sync for Outlook is supposedly faster than using IMAP, but we haven't tried both methods to see how the speed compares.