Intelligent Connection Management
Outlook 2003 supports something called Cached Exchange Mode. In Cached Exchange Mode (which requires Exchange Server 2003), Outlook recognizes the kind of connection you have to the Exchange server (even if that means no connection at all) and automatically adapts its behavior to the characteristics of the connection.

When you have a good connection, Outlook pulls down information from the server and stores it on your hard drive. It then works from that information, and synchronizes itself with Exchange whenever it can. This means you always have a reasonably current version of your Outlook information to work from, even if you have no connection to the server at all.

Cached Exchange Mode is perfect for Tablet PC users, since we're always moving our machines from place to place with no warning, and we need to be able to take advantage of whatever connection happens to be available wherever we are.

Bill Mann is a contributing editor for Computing Unplugged and the author of "How to Do Everything with Your Tablet PC" and "How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office Outlook 2003," both published by Osborne/McGraw-Hill.