Utz - 28 October 2005 06:16 PM

Ness - 28 October 2005 07:49 AM

jonny_m - 28 October 2005 06:54 AM

I finally switched over to…. Thunderbird. It’s free. It’s IMAP (slow). It’s cross platform, so it works on Windows at work and the Mac at home.

Thunder bird is Mozilla’s right?

How slow is it running?

Yeah, it’s Moz. I am sorry that don’t know how to convey the degree of slowness in a post - it’s sluggish, but not sluggish enough to make me go back to Entourage again. Just try it out, it’s easy to install.

On the other hand, if Mail works fine for you with .mac, there is absolutely no need to switch. My problem is that Mail does not work fine with IMAP.

no plans on switching any time soon

I’m another wishy-washy go back and forther. I’m now on Mail but used the last version of Entourage for a couple of years. I did the demo thing with the 2004 revision and have to agree that it’s an excellent program. However, I don’t use it.

The main reason I don’t use it is because I’ve fallen in love with services aware small applications that tie Mail, iCal and Address Book together and make the data available in other interesting ways. The Services menu makes it easy to send selections out of Cocoa apps to Mail. Yes, I can copy and paste into Entourage but ever step takes time.

Entourage has more features, but Mail is good enough and the ability to connect with iCal and address book via third party programs more than overshadows the goodness of Entourage as an email client. And, I’ll me-too the sync problem. Even with third party help it just doesn’t sync reliably with my Palm or between my Macs or with my cell phone. If you use the rest of Office then Entourage is a good choice. If most of your work utilizes other options then it isn’t.

I’m a web designer and use iBiz to keep track of my projects. How do I create a new account? In Address book. iBiz links well with a sister app iBank that is much more reliable than Quicken. Where do I keep my working files? In DEVONthink, which is happy to import and sync my mail and addresses for convenient backup.

iCal is my main control center for automating recurring timed processes. I use Audio Hijack to save streaming audio so I can listen to it at more convenient times. I use Yummy FTP to keep web sites backed up. Both programs are happy to take their instructions for when to do their tricks automatically from iCal.

iCal also makes it easy to publish multiple calendars, one for my MUG, another form my photography club and another for family.

I tried Eudora for a short time. I used to use it on OS 7 - 9. It may seem silly but I won’t use it because it’s ugly. If that doesn’t bother you then give it a try. The sponsored version is free and full featured.

Finally, when I did use Entourage I also used Emailchemy to convert my mail out of Entourage’s database into a savable format. Backups are good. It’s a very worthwhile $25.

At work I am forced to use, wait for it… Lotus Notes. The most gigantic steaming pile of poop ever ported to the Macintosh.

I just installed 10.4.3 and:.... tarum tarum

Mail has learned to speak IMAP again!! I am even able to perform a synchronized replication of my mail account for offline work (inluding attachments)!

No more waiting for sluggish Thunderbird! Welcome back Spotlight! Hello Address Book integration!

To the trashcan with you, Thunderbird! What, Entourage, still there? To the trash with you, at once!

...

God, the greatest joy is always in the smallest things.

Utz - 01 November 2005 01:51 AM

I just installed 10.4.3 and:.... tarum tarum

Mail has learned to speak IMAP again!! I am even able to perform a synchronized replication of my mail account for offline work (inluding attachments)!

No more waiting for sluggish Thunderbird! Welcome back Spotlight! Hello Address Book integration!

To the trashcan with you, Thunderbird! What, Entourage, still there? To the trash with you, at once!

...

God, the greatest joy lies always in the smallest things.

Oops, wrong button

I’ve been using mail with IMAP for quite a while now and hadn’t noticed any problems syncing.

mystic - 28 October 2005 11:55 PM

I’m another wishy-washy go back and forther. I’m now on Mail but used the last version of Entourage for a couple of years. I did the demo thing with the 2004 revision and have to agree that it’s an excellent program. However, I don’t use it.

Same here. I had Entourage on Mac OS 9.x and loved it to death. With OS X, Apple’s Mail efforts just sucked. With Panther, I decided to make the switch from Office Entourage on OS X and it’s worked out very well.

Integration of Mail with iCal, AddressBook is excellent. Same with iSync and .Mac, which I’m coming to appreciate though it’s much too expensive.

Apple was wise to stay out of the PDA wars after Newton. Nobody made much money. I don’t think anyone but Microsoft is making much money on the PC side of the PDA equation.

Regardless, Mail has problems but not enough to make me switch back. I have around 300 megs of Mail messages which backup in just minutes using the incremental backup of Backup 3.0. Can’t do that with Entourage.

I’m not Microsoft Free yet, but getting close.

All we need is a spreadsheet in iWork ‘06 and I’m there.

Speaking of IMAP accounts, does anyone have good suggestions on where to score one?  .Mac seems nice, of course, but I really don’t want to shell out the hundred bucks.

I am so over Entourage. I trashed it a few years ago and I am so happy I did. My wife loves it for some reason. I can’t figure it out. But the past couple of days, it just stopped working. Every-time it checks for POP mail, beachball of death… Which is better than what it was doing before which was crashing every-time it checked mail. Now I am banging my head trying to get it to work for her. I am just thankful I trashed it on my Mac. If I had to deal with this on 2 computers, I’d be in slit my wrists mode.

Are you saying that Windows is hardware? Or that people will be running OS X on a VM under Widows OS? What does “cross-platform independent” mean? MS will “assimilate”? Like buy Apple’s OS?

Your post confuses me on so many levels.

Yeah, and since when is Quicksilver comparable in purpose to Spotlight?

Spotlight in its current form admittedly is still far from perfect and far away from its potential - but it already constitutes a tremendous help for me to quickly retrieve and access the many text documents, presentations, articles, and e-mails on my system in a content-based fashion (it also got more responsive with the latest update). Eye candy, for sure.

What will be new in Leopard? Well, rumor has it (and I am willing to put some money on that bet as well) that there will be a completely redesigned Finder based on Spotlight. If that turns out to be true ... well, probably just some more eye candy again.

Ah, one more thing: think Mail looks ugly? Try Cage Fighter, and it looks like it should.

Quicksilver is a great application launcher, command and control center, and more - no doubt about it. But it is simply not about content-based search and retrieval. Or does it help me to look up all my e-mail correspondence I had about, say, the Tamino XML database server? Or all articles I wrote about it? (Or is Google just the Quicksilver of the Web?)

For best results, use both Spotlight and Quicksilver.

Utz, you beat me to it. Where’s that ‘troll’ graphic when we need it? Quicksilver is NOT Spotlight. Period. ‘Apple bows before the MS God and sells its soul?’ That’s a perfect example of why the bell curve accurately represents the spectrum of humanity. Of course, macor is on the left side of the curve when spewing such nonsense…

Idiot, it’s a Mac mini. Troll Alert.