Alternative to Entourage?

[cstatham]

hello
our company is mostly PCs and the IT Dept. has purchased Microsoft Exchange Server for our e-mail system. Unfortunately, Microsoft Entourage for OSX is full of bugs and is quite unreliable. Microsoft Tech support said they know they have issues, and they may repair them later in the year.

I know that we connect to the Exchange Server with IMAP.

Is there another e-mail app out there that can be used with the Microsoft Exchange Server?

Thanks for any insights. We use OSX 10.2.8
~Carol

[belf8st]

You might want to look at evolution. I've used it before on linux based systems.

You can get the application via fink for Mac OS X
http://www.ximian.com/products/evolution/

[cstatham]

Thank you very much for that link. I will check it out...
~Carol

[Westside guy]

Evolution can only access the Exchange Server's calendars if you buy their plugin - and that's not available on OS X.

If all you want is an IMAP mail client, then most any modern e-mail program will suffice. Mozilla Thunderbird (http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/) is what I use.

[cstatham]

Thank you for the tip about Thunderbird.

Unfortunately, we need to sync up our Calendars and Address Books to the rest of the company (who are on PCs). Our IT manager said that would take more than just an IMAP mail client to sync up with the Microsoft Exchange Server.

[onealc]

This is a last ditch effort, BUT maybe there's an old laptop or PC hanging around, and you could use that just to do the calendar sync/address book. If you got even a very low-end palm, you could sync it with multiple computers, then it'd be easy every once in a while to bring it over to the old pc, give it an update sync, then get back to your business on your mac.

I have no idea if that makes sense, or would even work, but just trying to think!

[TEG]

Also, Apple Mail works just fine with IMAP servers. Unfortuantely, iCal doesn't work with exchange calanders, but thats not really a big deal.

TEG

[cstatham]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by onealc
[B]This is a last ditch effort, BUT maybe there's an old laptop or PC hanging a

[cstatham]

for some reason my message was cut off...here goes again...

This is a last ditch effort, BUT maybe there's an old laptop or PC hanging around, and you could use that just to do the calendar sync/address book. If you got even a very low-end palm, you could sync it with multiple computers, then it'd be easy every once in a while to bring it over to the old pc, give it an update sync, then get back to your business on your mac.

I have no idea if that makes sense, or would even work, but just trying to think!


Yes, our IT manager suggested that, but we have 5 people on Macs, and that seems like a waste of resources to me. Plus, nobody has the extra desk space for an additional computer.

I think we will have to work in OSX, and then use Outlook 2001 running in Classic. At least until Microsoft decides to overhaul Entourage.

Thank you for your brainstorming!