Running Outlook 2010 (and possibly 2007, 2003)? Update your rules.

Then you probably have rules and alerts.  But have you spotted this?

Unfortunately I clicked Upgrade Now before I took the screen shot, but if you go into Manage Rules,

then Options, then you get the chance to upgrade your rules.  You get a warning about issues if you are running an older version of Outlook for this mailbox on another machine.

It certainly seems to process faster, but other than that I’ve observed nothing else (so far!)

More here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/291608 but it doesn’t really explain what benefit you’ll get..