e-mail programs: Thunderbird vs Mail vs Entourage

[Apple]

I like mail's interface the best and with gmail, I think it works perfect

 

[MisterMe]

So much information.. so...

Maill chokes on large mail (i don't have that much mail coming thru at one time)
Eudora is Eudora
Entourage is Outlook (which means its filter needs a lot of work)
Tbird - unless it's changed its filter since 1.0, was worse than outlook

The big question I have is, which handles multiple addresses, both imap and pop3, the best? I have like 6 or 7 email addys and want them all to come into their seperate folder(W/O rules!). That's one thing that pissed me off about switching back to Outlook from Tbird(Tbirds god awful filter drove me away). Outlook refused to accept having multiple emails having multiple inboxes for various pop3s and making those extensive rules JUST for that got old very fast while Tbird did it quite well out the box.

I plan to get my mac in the next 2 weeks and once I'm setup, I need to install a mail app pronto.

Entourage is not Outlook; it is Outlook Minus. The only reason that you should use Entourage is if you have an Exchange account and can't get Mail to access it. Otherwise, Mail is the way to go. If you don't like Mail, feel free to investigate other alternatives. However, if you don't need Exchange access, Entourage should be last on your list.

 

[rosalindavenue]

Thunderbird also has a killer junk mail filter - rivaling that of Mail.app, and much better than Eudora or Entourage.

Amen to that-- the Thunderbird junk filter is superb. I miss it every day when I come to the office and log into my outlook-on-exchange-server-on-PC and sift spam. I never used mail.app after I had difficulty getting it to connect with the POP server for my ISP.

 

[benh]

Thunderbird's filters are adequate, but I haven't found a way to do more complex filtering, such as a filter where I want to match a sender address of foo UNLESS there's another attribute present. There's ways around it, but none of them are particularly graceful.

It's handling my mail just fine, load wise, and it hasn't yet choked on anything. Does a decent job overall, and I'm happy with it. I began using it for real a few days ago, after importing my old mail, and thus far, it's fine.

Still looking for the perfect client, though. If they could fix some of the clunkiness of Thunderbird's UI (the filter add process sucks, and occasionally you can't type certain letters when adding a new mailbox) and revamp filtering, it'd be really close to perfect.

Has anyone used Powermail? What did you think?

 

[benh]

To answer my own question, PowerMail has a 2GB database limit, so it's no good for mail stores above 1.something gig. It stores all mail in a single database file, then indexes that database. So no mbox format, and a 2GB database size limit. Suck.

 

[Diomedes]

Agreed. Entourage is the worst email client that I have ever used on any platform.

That's a pretty broad generalization...how many mail clients have you used?

I've been architecting messaging systems well before the concept of "client-server" or "groupware" came into being. MS Mail Lotus Notes 2.x through today's version 7, cc:Mail, Groupwise, Outlook in all its iterations, Mail, and Entourage. Today I use Outlook, Notes, and Entourage on a daily basis.

Despite it's interface not being as pretty, I think Entourage is actually the best of the three I use. Outlook has many more features, and the benefit of COM addins; however, Outlook crashes (or forces me to terminate it) several times a day. The Notes client has always been, and still is, a lot of raw power in an ugly interface (and it's even uglier on the Mac, since IBM doesn't even use Quartz to smooth fonts...but they are working on that). Entourage causes me the least problems of probably any mail CLIENT I've ever used.

Entourage, Outlook, and Notes are designed for corporate, enterprise environments, and they are well suited for that. I wish Entourage's database was more flexible and open, like both Outlook's PST and Notes' NSF formats are. (For example, Google Desktop can index both PST and NSF files.) I wish Entourage's Calendar looked as nice as Outlook's. Perhaps this is due to its immaturity as an application — after all, it's only been around a few years, right? And it's main goal was to make a good Exchange client for the Mac.

Office 12's goals of a common file structure may mean changes for Entourage (for the better). Perhaps Entourage will become more flexible, or get a plug-in architecture (!) or something. However, the position it occupies in Office is mainly as a enterprise client and secondly as a home client. I use Entourage (and Outlook) for both.

Mail is a hopelessly simplistic applications. It is SLOW — I have a 1.67 GHz G4 with 2 Gb RAM, and every time I launch Mail that gear just keeps spinning and spinning and spinning. Mail fits the need it was designed for — the consumers who would buy iMacs and iBooks. Almost anyone who is using a Mac in an enterprise with Exchange servers will use Entourage.

If you are switching from Windows, Entourage behaves (mostly) like Outlook. I often find myself wishing Outlook had this or that feature I like in Entourage (or vice-versa).

Thunderbird is an interesting product. It will need time to mature — it's been shown that people are the most resistant to changing e-mail clients. If you have been using one client for a while, you probably have everything organized just so, with rules, addresses, layouts, etc to your liking.

Unlike Firefox, which can easily slide in and replace Explorer, Thunderbird will not step in and replace Outlook, Notes, or Entourage in organizations that have client-server messaging systems. And most people will use the same thing at home that they do at work.

There will be those of use who will probably use Thunderbird, if nothing more to see how it is evolving. However, it will probably not inspire the same kind of exodus Firefox did.

However...the bottom line is: USE WHATEVER MAIL CLIENT SUITS YOUR NEEDS. Personally, I like Entourage/Outlook and Notes' concept of having everything in one place. Besides my personal "disdain" for Mail, I don't like having one app for contacts, one for calendar, and another for notes/journal.

 

[bousozoku]

...
Thunderbird is an interesting product. It will need time to mature — it's been shown that people are the most resistant to changing e-mail clients. If you have been using one client for a while, you probably have everything organized just so, with rules, addresses, layouts, etc to your liking.

Unlike Firefox, which can easily slide in and replace Explorer, Thunderbird will not step in and replace Outlook, Notes, or Entourage in organizations that have client-server messaging systems. And most people will use the same thing at home that they do at work.

There will be those of use who will probably use Thunderbird, if nothing more to see how it is evolving. However, it will probably not inspire the same kind of exodus Firefox did.

However...the bottom line is: USE WHATEVER MAIL CLIENT SUITS YOUR NEEDS. Personally, I like Entourage/Outlook and Notes' concept of having everything in one place. Besides my personal "disdain" for Mail, I don't like having one app for contacts, one for calendar, and another for notes/journal.

Isn't this the big deal? Many times we need to use a certain mail server, such as Exchange, something that goes out of its way to be incompatible to secure the monopoly, so that we have little choice.

 

[MisterMe]

That's a pretty broad generalization...how many mail clients have you used?

....

The problem with Entourage is not that it does its job badly; the problem is that it doesn't do much of its job at all. What is its job? Entourage is exected to do one thing that no other app on MacOS X is expected to do. This is to manage Exchange accounts. With Outlook 2001, I could do this--in a fashion. Among Entourage's mind-boggling lapses is its inability to change my password. My firm forces password changes approximately once a month. To change my password, I have to use our Exchange web-based client or Outlook 2001. With Outlook 2001 following password expirations, you enter the expired password. The app asks for a new password and away you go. With Entourage, you are SOL. I pity the Mac users whose firms don't allow web-based access to their Exchange servers.

Every mail client is supposed to deliver mail from the server to the user's computer-- except Entourage, it seems. I set up my Exchange account in Mail using the client's Exchange settings. This, I did after setting up the same account in Entourage 2004. I had noticed that the web client seemed to show messages that were nowhere to be seen in Entourage. When I accessed the account with Mail, there they were. In Entourage, there they were not. Part of the problem seems to be Entourage's spam filters. Unlike Mail, which flags spam for the user to take action, Entourage hides it. It stays on the server, the user never sees it. I missed some important emails due to this BS behavior. What is worse, disabling the spam filter seems not to work. Once created, spam filters seem to be immortal. After they are "disabled," spam filters seem to continue unabated and continue to hide messages from Entourage. My workaround was to create a new account to access Exchange and to delete the first. Only this time, I made sure that spam filtering was disabled. The new account is able to access the old "invisible" messages.

I have other issues with Entourage, but I hope the other readers will get the point even you don't. To use an automobile analogy: If my Pinto bursts into flames, I don't need to drive every car in the world to know that the Pinto is dangerous.