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Favourite/Best email client

C

Chinashaw

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 18, 2005
69
0
Hi,

I was wondering if there is a general feeling about email clients for the Mac. I am about to set up my own business and have decided to stop using Windows/bootcamp.

I am very used to Outlook and think it really is the best mail/calender/to do/general nag program around for windows.
I know I can get Entourage but I have decided on iWork 08, so no desire to buy Office for Mac just to get Entourage.

I have/am trying Mail (Mail is freaky) and Thunderbird (getting quite hacked off with Thunderbird). Are there any others out there? What do people think of the whole separation of the mail, calender, address book functions, does it work?
I currently use Gmail and then have a pop mail account for my business (1and1 based)

Short and snappy or Long and detailed answers are sought!

Thanks,
 
Hey! Personally I think mail.app is great. It is very simple and has waaaaay better search functions than Outlook. (I use outlook at work, or actually, I used to and now I use Lotus Notes which is great.) Search functions mean a lot to me when I know I have a mail in one of 20 folders and I have to find it fast.

I like the separation between mail.app and adressbook.app, but I've really never fancied iCal. It would be a lot better for me to just have the calendar directly in mail.app as I don't like to clutter my task-bar. So there, Outlook or Notes win over mail.app.

You should know, though, that Apple is about to add to-dos and notes to mail, and I guess this will make the app a bit more suitable for business (If you're not into that GTD-stuff, that is. If so, Actiontastic might be an app for you.)

http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/mail.html

Thunderbird.. meh! It just feels unfinished to me. Download it and try it with a dummy mail-account and see for your self. (As far as I know, it has nothing that mail doesn't have, save RSS which mail.app will get with Leopard.)
 
Btw. be sure to check the video on the link I gave you. I just did, and I was impressed with some of the new features. (like making to-dos directly from a sentence in an incoming mail, or a line in a note - or adding events to iCal if people write a date or time in normal text.)
 
Although Mail, Addressbook and iCal are all separate programs, they all talk with each other very well so if you add a contact in address book you'll be able to use them as a contact within Mail as well.
 
I think if you really like Outlook, only Entourage will really work for you. I moved from Outlook to Mail (I actually recently started using Outlook 03 again at work). I see them as having their strengths and weaknesses, but generally I'm content with both.

In terms of other major options... I think the only one is that there is a planned rebirth of Eudora under the auspices of Mozilla (I'm not sure what this portends for Thunderbird). There's also no timeframe on that. You might give Eudora 6.2.4 a try... it has many aficionados, although few of them would describe themselves as Outlook fans.
 
well, i wonder what accounts can you use with '' Mail '' the app that came with my mac...can i use yahoo? msn? aim? or just .mac ??
 
M@lew said:
You can use anything that supports POP-3 or IMAP.
Click to expand...

Also Exchange.

You can use Yahoo and Hotmail and other free web e-mails without POP/IMAP access (most of the time... some people seem not to be able to get either method to work) using HTTPMail or MacFreePOPs (the former will only work for older accounts; the latter should work for any account).
 
Im using thunderbird, i read posts about mail.app corrupts lib and refuse to download new mails. In my own experience, its too slow, and has no colorful tags for each mail.
 
Poff said:
Just out of interest, what do you like about Thunderbird?
Click to expand...

oh...
1. theme
2. tag email to different categories with different color lable
3. fast speed fetching emails from server (mail.app is slow connecting to my IMAP server)
4. easy to read attachment area (mail.app won't show attachment if its a TXT file)
5. cross platform, I use it on my Mac/Vista/Lin box all together.
6. fishing website alart, whenever I click a link inside a email, if its real address doesn't match the apparent one, TB pops-up a warning, ask me if I want to visit "(real address)"..
5. vertical view like outlook 2003 ( yes, I do know mail.app has an "addon" for it, altho Im not sure about its stability)
6. easy to compose a HTML mail.
picture2da6.png
 
Thank you

Hi All,
Many thanks for the replies and comments. I have looked at Eudora and will wait to see what Mozilla do. As for Entourage, I did like it but when I had to export contacts it went all buggy (I ended up having to drag them and drop them into mail, then export them again) and the file it saved it as was terrible, so I won't ever go back to Entourage.

Have decided to have a bash at using Mail and the other applications, figure I never gave them enough of a shot. This has though, lead to another question and one to do with iCal. Can I sync iCal with Google calender? I have seen some software on the Apple site for this 'Spanning Sync' but it costs me USD$65 for the bit of kit. WHile I don't mind paying for software, this strikes me as a little expensive for a piece of syncing software that only does one thing. Do you have any thoughts? Suggestions or should I just bite the bullet?

And if that all does not work, then back to Thunderbird.

Thanks.
 
Mail for OS X, Thunderbird for Windows. Mail just seems prettier and more user-friendly and I don't need the more advanced features that Thunderbird offers.
 
Chinashaw said:
Hi All,
Many thanks for the replies and comments. I have looked at Eudora and will wait to see what Mozilla do. As for Entourage, I did like it but when I had to export contacts it went all buggy (I ended up having to drag them and drop them into mail, then export them again) and the file it saved it as was terrible, so I won't ever go back to Entourage.

Have decided to have a bash at using Mail and the other applications, figure I never gave them enough of a shot. This has though, lead to another question and one to do with iCal. Can I sync iCal with Google calender? I have seen some software on the Apple site for this 'Spanning Sync' but it costs me USD$65 for the bit of kit. WHile I don't mind paying for software, this strikes me as a little expensive for a piece of syncing software that only does one thing. Do you have any thoughts? Suggestions or should I just bite the bullet?

And if that all does not work, then back to Thunderbird.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

did you google?

did you try this http://www.tuaw.com/2006/04/13/howto-subscribe-to-a-google-calendar-using-ical/ ?
 
I've used Thunderbird in the past but switched back to Mail about a year ago. I've been trying to find a good lightweight e-mail client for a little while now, Mail is definitely starting to slow down with over 60k e-mails saved.

I just know the import process is going to be a complete pain if I do switch and I don't want to lose my e-mails.
 
Mail.app on mac is perfect! I used mail.app when I first got my macbook last year. When I got Office 2008 a few months ago I thought I would try out Entourage (as I use Outlook at work). However, I just discovered the magical use of Smart Folders in Mail.app, and I don't know how I did without this before. Automatically searches messages for tags, sender, etc and sorts my mail into the folders (depending on the rules I set). Works great!
 
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