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Mac Mail or Microsoft Entourage?

A

absurdio

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 25, 2003
380
0
RI, Chi, and/or NY.
I've been using the default Mail app, but I recently picked up a version of Microsoft Office, which includes, among other things, Entourage.

Has anyone had any experience with Entourage (positive or negative)? Any reason I should use one program over the other? Any advice in this department? What do you all use?

Thanks.
 
Entourage is a program similar to Outlook on Windows. It has a task list and calendar. Sorting and categorizing options are primitive. I much prefer mail.app for mail, and slightly prefer ical for calendar/things to do (admittedly, ical is a pretty weak product).

Entourage might be better for you if you're in a corporate mail system with Exchange, and you can persuade the admins to turn on the IMAP protocol. I say "might" because my company's admins refused to do so. Outlook and Exchange use an antiquated proprietary MAPI protocol, which Entourage doesn't support.

But basically, few people use Entourage, and there are good reasons for that.
 
Heh. Thanks. I've been (at least for the most part) pretty satisfied using Mail and iCal, so I must say I don't feel exactly pressured to switch. Had there been some vastly compelling reason to do so, I might have, but, well, I'm just as happy not to. Thanks again.
 
Had been trying to switch to Mail since v 1 but it just doesn't live up to expectations... Well, actually, it doesn't work with my mail account at all. Entourage is great, I love it, it works for me flawlessly and I must say - for the Ms program it is plain wonderful. If Mail suits you - use it. But Entourage is nice. Nice.
 
After being fed up with Mail screwing up my inbox, creating weird folders, not connecting, etc I started using Entourage for a while and really liked it. Then Panther came along and the new Mail and it blew me away. I'm back on Mail full-time. It's MUCH better than before. While it lacks the extras of Entourage it more than makes up for it with it's simplicity, customization, searching, drag and drop, attachment handling, and integration with iCal and Address Book. Hated Mail version 1. Haven't touched Entourage since Panther came out. Me Likey!
 
stick with what will be there in 5 years...

I'm still using Mail 1.x and looking forward to see thing the new features/performance of the Jaguar version.

In my mind, it makes sense to stick with Mail since

1) It's pretty good
2) It's actively supported (with new features an improved performance)
3) It will be ready-installed and pretty much guaranteed to work every time I upgrade my OS
4) I would bet money that it will still be here in 5 years (I wouldn't make that bet with Entourage)
 
Well, I've been reasonably happy with iCal and Address Book - at least happy enough that I don't feel I need to replace them. That means I'd be using entourage just for mail, I guess, and that doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. For now, at least, I think I'm going to stick with Mail for the same reason I've stuck with iChat: its integration with the rest of iLife is a huge help. So Mail it is (for now, at least). Incedentally, what's the newest version of Mail? I seem to have 1.2.5. and I'm running OS X 10.2.8 (haven't made it to panther on my pb yet). Is there a newer version of mail? Can I get it before upgrading to Panther or will that not work? Thanks again.
 
I use Mail for its simplicity and for its integration with the Address Book. Entourage makes its own contacts list so I'm not sure if Entourage can use the Apple Address Book, but I like having all my contacts in one place for use systemwide so I can add contacts from iChat.
 
i enjoy the integration between address book, ichat, (adium now uses it too hehe) and mail. I love how when someone is online it shows the greendot in mail and that i can type my friends name in mail or my sister's name and it know that it will send to the email address associated with her name
 
Does anyone know if Entourage can access the Address Book? I'm on OS 9 right now so I can't check.
 
I know this is off topic, but it's related in a way. I didn't realize until i read kwyjibo's post that Adium also works with address book (the only thing that was keeping me strongly tied to ichat). So now I'm giving Adium another shot, and I'm trying to make it look and feel as much like ichat as possible :) . So this is mostly a question for you, kwyjibo, but works for anyone else that wants to answer: is there a way to make Adium use the little status circles ichat uses (immediately to the left of everyone's name) to indicate status? I've played around with the options for a while, but as far as I can tell, the status circles in adium are only clear...and pretty useless. is that right?
Thanks.
 
I have been a steady POP3 Account holder for a while now and using it with Mail programme by OSX 10.3 has been great got rid of cartoony hotmail a while back and entourage GUI is not as nice as the interface mac have developed the simplicity and design of the interface goes without words, sheer brilliance, one satisfied customer here. :)
 
absurdio, what version of Adium are you using? I'm using the latest alpha and there are no such things as status circles. Instead, you can choose to have the whole name highlighted with a color.

If the person is idle the screenname is highlighted with a tannish color, and light blue if the person is away. It does this by default for me.
 
Yeah, I got the newest alpha as well (or at least the newest available January 7th...). It's version 2.0 if that helps. And you're right that, by default, the buddy list just hightlights names based on status. However, under "Contact List" in the Preferences window, there's a tab for Contacts. In that tab, towards the bottom, there is a "Status Display" title, under which is "Draw Status Circles"
Checking that does, in fact, make little circles appear to the left of everyone's name...but they don't seem to change color...or do anything. I dunno. If you can find that in the Preferences, give it a shot, if you like....I'm curious to see why the status circles aren't doing anything...
I'm also debating starting a new thread for this...I don't know. Thanks for the help, tho.
 
Re: Adium status circles
I haven't seen those before and like you said, you can't do much with those, as far as I can tell from playing around with it. The one thing I can get it to do is display idle time, which is already shown without the status circles.
 
I believe that those status circles are from Adium 1.6, the last stable version. Names were not highlighted nor could idle times be displayed without status circles.

Now that so much has changed since 1.6, I believe that there is no need for those circles that you mentioned.
 
Here's a pic of Adium 1.6 with status circles, in case you were wondering.
 

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