I am a recent Mac convert, having purchased a Mac this summer.  I received a copy of Office from my parents as a gift, and I am wondering if I should drop Mail/Address Book/iCal in favor of Entourage.  I was wondering if anyone here has used both and which you prefer.

I just wrote a long reply to your question and I lost it…. duh.

I use entourage, never mail (see below). I like the integration it has to word, excel (for emailing directly). I like the links you can do and the project center in office is great.

The only time I use Mail is I fire it up every week or so and grab all the mail (I keep it on the server)... but when I start mail up and see all the mail, spotlight will work on mail (it does not work with entourage).

I am use to entourage and am not the best at comparing, but I’d go with entourage.

cj

I’m to opposite - I use mail.app, never entourage. Outlook at work is painful enough. Why bring it home too?

But seriously, one really cool thing about the Apple apps is the integration. Even though these are three separate apps, they work together. If I’m in iChat and a buddy is online, it shows as such in mail. iChat takes info from Address Book to fill in buddy info. Spotlight crawls email messages and ical events. There’s a lot of integration there without having to put all your eggs in a closed, proprietary MS basket.

I’ve used both and loved Entourage. It’s an excellent Mac application. That said, the one big drawback is no ability to sync with iSync (not easy, anyway) for use on multiple Macs. So, I made the switch to Mail, iCal, AddressBook and haven’t looked back.

Entourage is superb and an excellent choice. I don’t regret the move to Mail. Except for work, I’m ‘Microsoft Free’ and that’s becoming increasingly important.

Is Eudora still worth using? I haven’t used it for several years, so I’m not sure.

This seems a very personal issue as people swing both ways.

I can’t stand Entourage as I find its interface clunky, the single database file format a terrible design and its defiance of standards typically appalling of Microsoft. You can import your contacts and email into Entourage, but just try getting them out. Vcards? Standard UNIX mailboxes? None of that in Entourage.

The last time I looked at Eudora it was a sad, shadow of its former self. I was devoted Eudora user back with version 3, but nothing could convince me to use it now.

I dont, and wont use Entourage…its MICROSOFT!
i sworn them off for good!

Mail works very well…

does ent. even work w/ a .mac account?

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.

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?

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’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.