Mail or Outlook?

[Muttley1900]

Hi, I'm moving over to a iMac from PC in the next week or so (well will be putting in the order then) and already have decided that I need Office for Mac for Word and Excel (I use my home computer to do some work stuff on it - i find it easier than using the work laptop).

Anyway, I'm wondering if if i should get "professional" version of Office which also includes Outlook or if I should stick with Mail and therefore only get the "home / student" version of Office.

I've read on these forums that there are issues with Outlook syncing, but for what I have read this is via iTunes. So is there still the same problems if syncing via mobile me? Being able to sync using Mobile me is a big thing as I share calendars with my partner.

For what I have read, Mail is just emails and there are other apps for contacts and Calendars - do the three interact seamlessly and sync using mobile me.

I also understand that to get my old Outlook emails onto my new iMac and readable with Mail I will have to use a app to convert them - which seems to be no biggie according to those who have written about it.

So, my main concerns / questions are:-

-For those of you who have converted from Outlook to Mail - was it worth it, or would you have preferred to still be using Outlook;

- If I were to stick with Outlook, does it sync using mobile me;

- Does having 3 separate apps (Mail / Contacts / Calendars) work, or is having all 3 in one better.

Thanks for your time.

J.

 

[iPhoneCollector]

You should defenetly use mail it's much simpler and faster. By the way I don't think youb should invest money for Microsoft office you should rather go for iWork, the office program for Mac. It can edit and create all the office files you would find in microsoft office and even more. So there's not really a need to use ms office. iWork is $80and ms office is $200. So the cheaper version is better. have fun with your new Mac. And the three apps work like a charm

 

[1911]

As iPhoneCollector stated, Apple Mail is the way to go on a Mac. It was an easy transition to Mail from Outlook. My iWork transition was also painless.
I have a TechNET subscription so I did install Office 2011, but have only used it a few times as I prefer Pages and Numbers now. The only reason you would want Outlook is if you have an Exchange server hosting your mail as it does provide some extra functionality over Mail.

 

[Hellhammer]

You should defenetly use mail it's much simpler and faster. By the way I don't think youb should invest money for Microsoft office you should rather go for iWork, the office program for Mac. It can edit and create all the office files you would find in microsoft office and even more. So there's not really a need to use ms office. iWork is $80and ms office is $200. So the cheaper version is better. have fun with your new Mac. And the three apps work like a charm

iWork is useless if you need real compatibility with Office. Yes, you can save the documents in Office formats but every single time I do that, it screws up something like formatting, fonts or stuff like that. Office for Mac 2011 is only 120$ so not that bad. Definitely worth it if you need good compatibility with Windows.

@OP: I would stick with Mail. IMO Outlook is not worth the extra 200$ or whatever it costs

 

[tersono]

iWork is great, but it's not sufficiently Office-compatible (i.e. it won't save out in Office formats natively - you have to go through an export routine) to quite cut the mustard.

I agree with the others that you should try Mail. As an alternative to MS Office, you should think about trying OpenOffice - it will save natively to MS document formats and is pretty powerful. I work in a mixed Mac and Windows environment, and we have all the Macs running OpenOffice - no issues (the only reason we're not running OO on Windows is that our Windows-based CRM/DMS system requires MS Office for full functionality).

My advice is to start off with Mail and OpenOffice. if you then find that you still need MSOffice, you can always pick that up a little later - by which time you will have found out whether you need to go for the pro version.

 

[netbeans]

Muttley1900, I'm a new MAC user. The thought did came across my mind to use Outlook. But I made the jump and use Mail; from there on.. I never look back. The smartmailbox is awesome for searching.

As others have pointed out, if you rely on collaboration with MS users, you might want to consider Ms. Office (minus the outlook).

 

[Muttley1900]

Thanks

Thanks for all the replies. They have helped greatly.

I'm opting for Office for Mac without Outlook - Apple support confirmed that Syncing (either via iTunes or MobileMe) does not work with this version of outlook) and for what you guys have said here - I think I'll be more than happy with Mail, iCal and Contacts.

I liked the cracking idea to try out open office - so i did that today. Unfortunately, although it copped okay with the spreadsheets it didn't with the company "standard" word documents. But well worth the try as the price is right

Sometimes you just have to go with what works.

Thanks again.

 

[Muttley1900]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_6; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.19.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.3 Safari/533.19.4)

Just thought I'd let everyone know that I went with the recommendations to try (at least) mail - and it is working great for me. So, thanks everyone for your input.

J.

 

[sufferrar]

You can always download the office 2011 demo and try it out. I'm not sure if the demo has all features enabled but you have nothing to lose.

 

[Grannyville7989]

I would recommend Microsoft Office over iWork if you're dealing with a lot of Office made documents.

I purchased iWork a year ago for my Mac laptop but it didn't play nice with a lot of my .docx files that I created on my Windows 7 desktop, which I tend to do most of my university work on. I was forced to Boot Camp Windows 7 on my laptop and use that whenever I had to write an essay. When Office 2011 came out, I took a risk and purchased it and I was surprised by how much I liked it, as a didn't like Office 2004 or 2008. It has a very similiar look and feel to Office 2007 and 2010 on Windows.

I don't totally regret getting iWork. I'm very pleased that I have Keynote.