Mail or Entourage 2004?

Macsith

Macsith

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Mail or Entourage 2004?

I currently using Mail at work which was great but I'm now I sick of running three applications at once (Mail, Address Book, and iCal). I also have a large number of emails which I find difficult to deal with in mail.

The advantage of the iApps is that I used iSync with .Mac and bluetooth (which I must keep).

Im thinking of going to Entourage as most mac users I know who have a large email intake and hectic schedule (one screen). I heard to the there is a way to use iSync with it as well.

What are your thoughts???
 
I was testing Entourage 2004 and didn't like it at all. I would recommend mail.app since it's a lot faster and thus much better to deal with large number of mails. I also found a lot of bugs in Word 2004 and Excel 2004 which made me believe Office 2004 was not properly worked out. This might affect Entourage 2004 as well..
 
I have both and I personally prefer Mail. As Zammy said, Entourage, like the rest of the Mac Office suite is slowish, especially compared to comparable software from Apple and other software firms. I also find it easier to use than Entourage, and I really like how I can start new messages and check for new mail right from Mail's dock icon. Entourage does have more features, some of which I can see might really come in handy in an office enviornment, but they come at the expense of speed and usability.
 
You can open your address book from inside Mail as well, as a floating panel. Unless I need someone's phone number, I just type their name in and select what address I want to send to.

I've been trying to like Entourage, I have a small business and wanted my contacts, email, and calendar all to work together. It's overrated. Entourage is slow when scrolling graphical emails... it blocks images from people not in your address book (can't turn it off) and I've always hated how I need to setup mail rules to filter my three accounts into separate folders. Why can't I just have three inboxes?

I do like how Entourage doesn't display attachments inline with the rest of the email text... Mail is annoying that way. I also like how the Entourage calendar will alert you when you're late to something, iCal isn't as flexible it seems.

I choose to stick with Mail for now, it's fast, I can leave it open, and I like the little numbers on the icon for new mail. Try Mail for a while, and if you don't like it, you can always import your Mail mail into Entourage.

There are other programs out there too.
 
I had used Entourage for years, but when Office2004 got installed, I found the most critical design flaw for me, the Intel-iMac user. Entourage saves all mail messages in one file. It crashed on me and that file was gone. When I restarted Entourage, it was like the first run of the program. With the new iMac, there are no file recovery programs yet, so all was lost. Apple Mail saves each message separately.
Also I agree re speed, and the automatic Address Book lookup. If you have 10.4 (and use Widgets) there is a nice Address Book widget at the Apple OSX download site. I never open Address Book unless editing an entry.
 
I certainly understand your point, that a all-in-one client is easy and convenient. Entourage, in my opinion, leaves a large memory foot print, and periodically, you may experience some issues with bugs.
I prefer to use Apple Mail and iCal. In daily use, with a high volume of emails, I think you will find Entourage's interface clumsy to use. All the other suggestions are good ones. In short, although having two programs open sounds like more to coordinate, you will find it more efficient than Entourage. Just my two-cents!!!
 
I find that Entourage gets the job done for me. I like many of the features, and am used to having about 30 or 40 mail rules, coming from Outlook a few years ago. Now that Sync Services have been added (although not implemented as nicely as I'd hoped), syncing Entourage's contacts and calendar with Address Book and iCal is easy, and updates to either Entourage and iCal or Address Book are reflected across all three apps almost immediately. I say this to sort of counter others' comments about using some of the features of AB and iCal, especially widgets, because you still can. I will concede, however, that using one app for one thing would be ideal, rather than needing to use iCal and AB for the widgets, and Entourage for everything else.

I'm surprised that this conversation is going the way that it is, which is to say that this question usually provokes a nasty argument, with people trashing Entourage. It is a bit bloated, as Microsoft's apps usually are, but it has more features than any one of the Apple apps (iCal, Mail, and Address Book), so I would expect the footprint to be a lot larger.

One nice feature that I love with Entourage is the Project Center. Being able to group all my contacts, emails, external documents, internal notes, and calendar events into manageable projects is a big help.

All that said, Entourage certainly isn't for everyone, but I think it comes down to personal preference. I keep saying that I'm going to use Mail one of these days, and give it more of a test run than I have in the past, but I haven't gotten around to it just yet. I'm really hoping that Apple will add a few features in the next release, so that I have more of a reason to switch. Something like the Project Center would get me there.
 
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