I didn't ask when, I asked why?
Why the hell would you support a competitor's OS... especially one that is losing the sales war?
Kill Office and you kill a good percentage of people/companies that might migrate from Windows to Mac.
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Entourage Sucks
- Thread starter j0ebeer
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I didn't ask when, I asked why?
Why the hell would you support a competitor's OS... especially one that is losing the sales war?
Kill Office and you kill a good percentage of people/companies that might migrate from Windows to Mac.
You've got to see the bigger picture here. There is money to be made by providing an office suite on Macs that everyone uses to keep compatibility with Windows. This means everyone keeps using Office regardless of whether they're on Windows or OS X, thus maintaining the product's strength across platforms. If MS didn't do it, someone else would; OpenOffice.org wants to compete for starters, and Apple is slowly increasing compatibility with iWork.
Plus, people using Macs are doing so for a reason. They're not just going to come back to Windows for Office, so getting some cash out of them for Office is better than getting no money from them at all.
That's my 2p anyway.
Nope. As a matter of fact I have email going back to 2004!
2004 (2,397 emails), 2005 (5,682), 2006 (5,242), 2007 (2,871), 2008 (2,457) = 18,649 emailsplus whatever came in today.
Ah, that's nothing. I've got 30,000 e-mails in one box alone and that only goes back to June 2007. Trust me when I say Apple Mail bogs down VERY quickly with that many e-mails.
Strengthen? I think it actually hurts Apple. I think MS gave Apple an inferior product, compared with the PC. I know it sure crashes a lot and as for Application sharing between PC and Apple, we're still talking about two different types of fruit.
I sure am glad that the VM Fusion runs so well on the Mac, otherwise I would be forced to go back to the PC.
Compatibility with Windows... I share a lot of presentations with people at work. When I receive theirs, I spend at least an hour fixing slides that Mac PPT totally messed up. If you run the compatibility review, I get hundreds of issues, so when I send one back over to the PC side after it has been fixed for Mac, they usually can't even load it on the PC side and if they can, they have a bunch of fixes to do.
I do wish Apple would step up to the plate and compete. That would force MS to improve the Mac product.
Microsoft doesn't give Apple anything. Microsoft sells Office 2008 to Macintosh users. For its trouble, Microsoft makes a boatload of money. The Macintosh Business Unit is one of the few Microsoft units to earn a profit.
I take it that you have never tried to work with an Office document--.doc, .ppt, etc.--on two different versions of Office:win. Until Office 2008, Office:mac was more compatible with any two different versions of Office:win than the two different versions of Office:win were with each other.
My advice to you is to forget about the Compatibility Review. Just be sure to do your final edits using the same version of Office as the target version. If this isn't possible, then don't worry about it. Most professionals have seen enough PowerPoint presentations to know that they often go awry.
What are you talking about, Willis? Ever heard of Keynote? It is one of the few presentation apps out there. Many people, myself included, believe that it is better than PowerPoint. It runs only on the Mac. It is developed and sold by Apple. Of course, there are also Star Office/OpenOffice/NeoOffice and Canvas. Canvas, an app which was pioneered on the Mac, featured a presentation mode for most of its existence. Its current owner, ACD, no longer develops Canvas for the Mac.
However, I presume that what you want a plug-in replacement for Office--either free-of-charge like Open Office, or at a substantially lower price like iWork. As long as Microsoft formats dictate your purchases, every other developer who even thinks about competing for your dollar is at a competitive disadvantage.
I wish fewer people used Entourage. For some people it works... It's even necessary. However, a lot of people that use it do so because they are switchers who see it as "Outlook for Mac", and have little (or nothing) to gain from using it.
IMO, you're not getting the real Apple experience if you switch to Mac and jump right into Entourage. You're getting an alternative Microsoft experience.
Unless you need Exchange/ActiveSync support, I highly recommend at least test-driving Mail/Address Book/iCal before restoring to Entourage. If you don't like it, fine... At least you tried.
Personally, I'd take the Apple apps over Entourage any day of the week. The Apple stuff made me nervous when I first switched. It had SOOOOO few menu options compared to Outlook. But, what I learned is that I wasn't actually using any options that aren't included in the Apple apps. Again, this isn't the case for everyone, but I suspect I'm not the only one that wasn't doing anything in Outlook that the Apple apps won't do.
A year and a half after switching, and I still find myself intrigued by the idea that I'm doing everything I did in Outlook, via a much cleaner, more streamlined interface.
IMO, you're not getting the real Apple experience if you switch to Mac and jump right into Entourage. You're getting an alternative Microsoft experience.
Unless you need Exchange/ActiveSync support, I highly recommend at least test-driving Mail/Address Book/iCal before restoring to Entourage. If you don't like it, fine... At least you tried.
Personally, I'd take the Apple apps over Entourage any day of the week. The Apple stuff made me nervous when I first switched. It had SOOOOO few menu options compared to Outlook. But, what I learned is that I wasn't actually using any options that aren't included in the Apple apps. Again, this isn't the case for everyone, but I suspect I'm not the only one that wasn't doing anything in Outlook that the Apple apps won't do.
A year and a half after switching, and I still find myself intrigued by the idea that I'm doing everything I did in Outlook, via a much cleaner, more streamlined interface.
I could not agree more. Entourage is not Outlook:mac. It's not even close. Outlook 2001, the last version of Outlook for the Mac is MacOS 9 only. However, it works better with Exchange than Entourage--still.
Just because you paid for Entourage doesn't mean that you are required to use it. If Mail/Address Book/iCal work, then use them.
Perhaps I am in the minority here, but I use BOTH for different purposes. I use Entourage for work-related Exchagne/Outlook things, and I use Mail.app for everything else. In my experience Mail.app doesn't work nearly as smoothly with our Exchange server as does Entourage, the ActiveSync support in Entourage means that I get my mail immediately, I like the way Entourage lets me keep my mail organized the same way I did in Outlook (and works very similarly), and the integration of Exchange Contacts and Calendar in invaluable to me. It makes working with a Mac at my Windows-only company so much easier than a combination of Mail/iCal/AB (plus all of the various syncing tools they would require).
OTOH Mail/iCal/AB work very well in a personal environment and seem best suited to that task IMHO. However, since migrating to gmail I have almost forgotten mail.app, because it (just like everything else out there) doesn't interact very well with the folder/archive/other quirks of gmail. I have gone to using the gmail web interface almost exclusively (except on my iPhone). I wish there was a good mail client that worked well with gmail's quirks, but have not found anything yet.
What about Project Center?
I stick with Entourage because it's always worked well for me, and because of the very useful Project Center. There are dozens of programs out there designed to "bring it all together" to help make me more productive, etc.
They are all trying to recreate Entourage, which pulls together mail, calendar, tasks, notes, and lets me create projects, in which I can also pull in PDF files, invoices, web clippings, etc. and link them all one to another. For some reason, I also prefer seeing my email preview pane on the side of my message list. I can see the entire email easily. On my Powerbook, in Mail.app I have to scroll up and down to preview emails which is annoying.
I like the Apple apps, but there's no functionality like project center, plus as integrated as the apps are, they are not one app. In Entourage I can set everything up the way I need it, hide the tool bars, and get a very clean-looking interface that lets me click from calendar to mail to tasks to notes to projects with one mouse click or keystroke.
The project center in Entourage is the single best productivity tool I've used. I really don't understand its lack of attention. Everyone I work with has Office on their Macs, and nobody but me uses project center.
I stick with Entourage because it's always worked well for me, and because of the very useful Project Center. There are dozens of programs out there designed to "bring it all together" to help make me more productive, etc.
They are all trying to recreate Entourage, which pulls together mail, calendar, tasks, notes, and lets me create projects, in which I can also pull in PDF files, invoices, web clippings, etc. and link them all one to another. For some reason, I also prefer seeing my email preview pane on the side of my message list. I can see the entire email easily. On my Powerbook, in Mail.app I have to scroll up and down to preview emails which is annoying.
I like the Apple apps, but there's no functionality like project center, plus as integrated as the apps are, they are not one app. In Entourage I can set everything up the way I need it, hide the tool bars, and get a very clean-looking interface that lets me click from calendar to mail to tasks to notes to projects with one mouse click or keystroke.
The project center in Entourage is the single best productivity tool I've used. I really don't understand its lack of attention. Everyone I work with has Office on their Macs, and nobody but me uses project center.
I have worked on the PC side with the many version of Office. The compatibility issues across versions are not as extreme as thoughs across platforms.
You are right, use the same version of the tool. It just means using Fusion more often for the PC version.
I use Keynote, and love it! The compatibility spread is just much wider than PPT.
No, I would just like to see Office for Mac have the same format and capabilities as Office for Windows. After all, it is the same company, just not the same BU.
Speaking of formats, any clue as to why Entourage scrapped the .pst format and went their own way?
When I swapped from Windows->Mac, I used the widget that Apple suggested to transfer my settings/email to the Mac. It did everything pretty much ok, but succeeded in trashing my mailbox.
That immediately put my back up, so I bought Office2004 (then upgraded to 2008). Entourage works very well for me - it deals with my pop account, hotmail, and I've attached it to my work's Exchange server through http (through Outlook Web Access).
The lack of consistantly of the user interface between the windows and mac versions winds me up a bit (office 2008 isn't even very Apple-like in it's UI).
But it works for me, and it's been stable.
That immediately put my back up, so I bought Office2004 (then upgraded to 2008). Entourage works very well for me - it deals with my pop account, hotmail, and I've attached it to my work's Exchange server through http (through Outlook Web Access).
The lack of consistantly of the user interface between the windows and mac versions winds me up a bit (office 2008 isn't even very Apple-like in it's UI).
But it works for me, and it's been stable.
Me too; I like to keep personal mail and work-related mail separate, and since my Uni uses Exchange then Entourage is best suited to handling its mail, leaving Mail.app & Co. for my personal life. Having it all together in one program just doesn't feel right to me.
I hate using webmail so I auto-forward all e-mail from my Gmail addy to alias ones on my ISP then download via POP so I can organise folders on my computer as I like without having all of Gmail's quirks. I can however go into Gmail at any time if I'm not at my computer and all my mail will be there.
In case you're interested, there's more details about why the Office 2007 and Office 2008 user experiences are different in this post from the MacBU team blog.
Regards,
Nadyne.
Hmmm...this is Day 1 for me on a Mac and I have used Outlook since the 90s.
I really like having the calendar, tasks, contacts, and various email accounts all in one place to save me time.
My struggle is wondering if I should switch to Entourage 2008 or install perhaps Windows 7 Beta and then Office 2007 and use it that way.
I want to stop using my Windows laptop which is 5 years old now.
Entourage seems a little weak so far and a little flakey so I struggle.
I also have a Windows Mobile phone and want to sync my contacts and tasks and don't think you can do that with Mac Mail...?
I've read all the posts on here and I still can't decide.
Why do people like having Mac Mail, iCal, and the address book all in separate places...?
Also, it seems on the Mac that you have to do so much clicking with the mouse - I can't seem to close windows with the ESC key and have to constantly click all the time and it hurts my hand and arm...maybe I just need to learn the keyboard shortcuts better.
Even with iTunes...the sound is greared towards low quality sound sort of like AM and FM rather than CD quality...why do people gravitate towards crappy sound...?
I really want to love the Mac...well, it is only Day 1 so I will keep trying.
I really like having the calendar, tasks, contacts, and various email accounts all in one place to save me time.
My struggle is wondering if I should switch to Entourage 2008 or install perhaps Windows 7 Beta and then Office 2007 and use it that way.
I want to stop using my Windows laptop which is 5 years old now.
Entourage seems a little weak so far and a little flakey so I struggle.
I also have a Windows Mobile phone and want to sync my contacts and tasks and don't think you can do that with Mac Mail...?
I've read all the posts on here and I still can't decide.
Why do people like having Mac Mail, iCal, and the address book all in separate places...?
Also, it seems on the Mac that you have to do so much clicking with the mouse - I can't seem to close windows with the ESC key and have to constantly click all the time and it hurts my hand and arm...maybe I just need to learn the keyboard shortcuts better.
Even with iTunes...the sound is greared towards low quality sound sort of like AM and FM rather than CD quality...why do people gravitate towards crappy sound...?
I really want to love the Mac...well, it is only Day 1 so I will keep trying.
I think something wonderful happened! Microsoft announced the public availability of Entourage for Exchange Web Services beta. You can register at Microsoft:
http://www.officeformac.com/.59b6a217
The new Entourage will be free when it comes this year for all Entourage 2008 owners. It supports tasks, notes and categories syncing und uses all the new EWS of Exchange 2007! Autodiscovery is fully supported. It works only with Exchange 2007 SP1 Rollup 4 or later.
I registered but acceptance to the beta can take up to 48 hours. I cant wait!
http://www.officeformac.com/.59b6a217
The new Entourage will be free when it comes this year for all Entourage 2008 owners. It supports tasks, notes and categories syncing und uses all the new EWS of Exchange 2007! Autodiscovery is fully supported. It works only with Exchange 2007 SP1 Rollup 4 or later.
I registered but acceptance to the beta can take up to 48 hours. I cant wait!
I use Entourage 2004 on my iMac at work (I also used Outlook for years) and for the most part it works for me. If Outlook is all that you need then perhaps you could run MS Office 2003 or 2007 under Crossover Office. That would be much simpler (and cheaper) than installing a copy of VMWare/Parallels and Windows just to get Office/Outlook. I have tried Crossover Office for other things and it is quite poor for the things that I have wanted, but I understand that it works quite well for running MS Office by itself.
I started to use iCal because Entourage doesn't allow you to subscribe to remote calendars. That makes it useless to me, unfortunately. Because of this I started using Mail.app as well, and now I love it.
Check out the missing sync for synchronizing your windows mobile phone with the built in mac PIM apps.
I've been using Entourage 08 for my work (IMAP) mail.
It's slow to load and clunky compared to Thunderbird.
Only issue is that in Thunderbird I have no contacts and there doesn't seem to be an easy way to get them across from Entourage.
Eg, in Entourage when I type "coll" it auto fills colleen@blah.net
How do I get this info happening in Thunderbird?
It's slow to load and clunky compared to Thunderbird.
Only issue is that in Thunderbird I have no contacts and there doesn't seem to be an easy way to get them across from Entourage.
Eg, in Entourage when I type "coll" it auto fills colleen@blah.net
How do I get this info happening in Thunderbird?
Calendars
I just installed entourage 2008 and was really excited about using full exchange features and syncing my ipod touch with calendars similar to what I used to on my XP laptop. Until I found out 2 tragic things. 1) I have student teacher version which does not support exchange 2) itunes does not have an option for me to sync my entourage calendar to my ipod.
So now after spending an hour of making my calendar in entourage, I am faced with having to start over or figure out how to transfer it over to outlook 2007.
Is there anyway to get a calendar from entourage 2008(on my mac) to outlook 2007(on my vm of my old laptop)? I tried exporting the 2008 , but it did not give me near as many options as a 2007 export.
Or is there anyway to make itunes put my entourage calendar on my ipod (similar to the way itunes on windows lets me put my outlook calendar on my ipod)?
I just installed entourage 2008 and was really excited about using full exchange features and syncing my ipod touch with calendars similar to what I used to on my XP laptop. Until I found out 2 tragic things. 1) I have student teacher version which does not support exchange 2) itunes does not have an option for me to sync my entourage calendar to my ipod.
So now after spending an hour of making my calendar in entourage, I am faced with having to start over or figure out how to transfer it over to outlook 2007.
Is there anyway to get a calendar from entourage 2008(on my mac) to outlook 2007(on my vm of my old laptop)? I tried exporting the 2008 , but it did not give me near as many options as a 2007 export.
Or is there anyway to make itunes put my entourage calendar on my ipod (similar to the way itunes on windows lets me put my outlook calendar on my ipod)?