[jaimzedup]

I was wondering which program everyone uses for their email. I have no experience with either program so it would be helpful to hear about the advantages and disadvantages of each program (or any other similar program for that matter).

[juanvaldes]

I use mail. It does everything I ask of it and never had any problems so I have not bothered to look at other clients. Plus Entourage costs $$$. I think if you work in a MS Office / Groupware place where you need more then a email client then mail will not meet your needs.

But for home....

[webcookie]

I have Mail, Entourage, and Thunderbird. I keep going back to Mail. Mail is simple and gets the job done. Thunderbird is a bit more featured, so that would be my second choice. Entourage is just too Windowsy and I can't stand it.

[cpac]

run a quick search - there are several very long threads on this exact topic.

People have widely differing preferences, but (just as with web browsers) the answer seems to be: Try them both for a bit, see which works better for you...

[ClaraT]

Originally posted by cpac:
run a quick search - there are several very long threads on this exact topic.

People have widely differing preferences, but (just as with web browsers) the answer seems to be: Try them both for a bit, see which works better for you...

Speaking of Entourage. . .is there a thread that can help me get both my mail accounts to receive and SEND in Entourage? I have absolutely NO problems in Mail with my earthlink acct. and my .org acct. but cannot get messages to send from the .org acct. in Entourage.

Thought I'd ask here since the subject is up about mail vs entourage. Mail is solid while Entrourage is frustrating and thus makes using the Project Center in Office 2004 near impossible.

Clarat

[Macola]

Originally posted by ClaraT:
Speaking of Entourage. . .is there a thread that can help me get both my mail accounts to receive and SEND in Entourage? I have absolutely NO problems in Mail with my earthlink acct. and my .org acct. but cannot get messages to send from the .org acct. in Entourage.

Thought I'd ask here since the subject is up about mail vs entourage. Mail is solid while Entrourage is frustrating and thus makes using the Project Center in Office 2004 near impossible.

Clarat

Check your SMTP server settings for your .org acct in Entourage.

[typoon]

If you can't send in Entourage you will probably need to use the outgoing mail server of your current internet provider.

eg. mail.domain.org if you have the domain through your current ISP then you can/could probably use mail.domain.org

if not you may need to put mail.domain.org in your incoming mail server and mail.isp.com for your outgoing.

[Gankdawg]

Entourage has mail, address book, and calendar built in. I like using just one program.

[jrafter]

Thunderbird.

[delete]

Originally posted by jrafter:
Thunderbird.

If you're willing to experiment, there are so many ways to customize Thunderbird. There are extensions for functionality and the ability to edit pref files to change colors, fonts etc.

[D'Espice]

I use Mail.app cause it gets the job done and it's faster than Entourage. Also, it has a spam filter that -although inferior to the Thunderbird spam filter- filters out some of the spam I get.

[Buck_W]

Initially I used Entourage because Mail had a resource fork issue that sent extra attachments to PC users. But now that that has been fixed, I've gone back to Mail and am completely satisfied.

Mail

[jaimzedup]

Originally posted by Gankdawg:
Entourage has mail, address book, and calendar built in. I like using just one program.

To further my inquiry about similar programs:

How do iCal and Entourage's Calendar compare?

[SSharon]

Maybe someone can explain to me why both Mail and Thunderbird feel the need to bounce their icons when they can't get mail from my university mail server. I would switch to a new app if it is limited to one bounce and thats it. Speaking of which why the hell do I still use safari when every time it times out it starts jumping around in the dock.

Umm so to answer your question I use mail since it autofills all the names in my addressbook but I haven't had a chance to add them to thunderbird although I might in the future now that I have been using it for two weeks or so.

[Fusion]

Originally posted by SSharon:
Maybe someone can explain to me why both Mail and Thunderbird feel the need to bounce their icons when they can't get mail from my university mail server. I would switch to a new app if it is limited to one bounce and thats it. Speaking of which why the hell do I still use safari when every time it times out it starts jumping around in the dock.

Umm so to answer your question I use mail since it autofills all the names in my addressbook but I haven't had a chance to add them to thunderbird although I might in the future now that I have been using it for two weeks or so.

You could just turn dock bouncing off altogether...

[SSharon]

thats true, my problem is that Thunderbird even has an option to turn off dock animation for new e-mails (which I have off), so you would think that if I don't want it bouncing then I don't want it bouncing at all. I don't want to be forced to turn off the bounce when an application launches just because my mail programs and safari feel the need to bug me. btw, even when dock animation is turned off in the dock pref pane my AIM client still bounces because it has the option set to bounce once and I guess this overrides the pref pane. The bottom line is if AOL can include this preference and thunderbird can include it (although not as well implemented as AIM) then why can't apple do it in their own software?

[USNA91]

I'd love to use Entourage (because of its all-in-one capacity), but it doesn't look like I can sync my PDA with it (iPaq). Even Missing Synch doesn't seem to work with Entourage.

Any ideas?

[Chandy]

Originally posted by USNA91:
I'd love to use Entourage (because of its all-in-one capacity), but it doesn't look like I can sync my PDA with it (iPaq). Even Missing Synch doesn't seem to work with Entourage.

Any ideas?

PocketMac syncs ipaq and Entourage

[Teri Pettit]

I used Mail for a few months back when I first upgraded to OS X, just because it came with the OS, and switched to Entourage in Oct of 2001. It has been a long while, so my memory is a bit fuzzy on the details, but the main problem I had with Mail was that it did not do a good job of importing my old mail files from Eudora (it discarded all the header info on the messages in my "Sent" folder, so that there was no record of who they were sent to, and they were all stamped with the date I imported them.) It also hung on all the very large folders and failed to import all the messages, although I don't remember how far it got. (When I was trying to import my Eudora mail there were over 300,000 messages across all the folders, many of them with more than 10,000 messages per folder.) Entourage imported them perfectly.

I seem to recall it also had poor performance in general with very large mail folders, but I'm not real sure of that.

Of course that was an early version of Mail, and it may well have fixed those problems by now. But transferring archives between mail programs is a hassle even when it works, so I haven't felt any need to reexamine Mail. (I prefer keeping my archives in my current program if at all possible, so that a single search can find matches from the current year and from many years back. I have a lot of genealogy correspondence archived, and it is often useful to find, say, who sent you some bit of data when it may have been something you received 12 years ago.)

If this is an issue to you, you may want to check out how well your old mail folders import from your current program into Mail vs Entourage before committing to one. Other than that, I haven't really noticed much difference in the overall feature set.

[passmaster16]

I always liked the fact that I could set the receipient's platform which is very useful for Windows users. Mail used to send two files, say a word document and a resource fork. I didn't like this because the file names were the same. I'm not sure if Mail's behavior is the same now. I'm sure that Mail users can comment.

[Fusion]

Originally posted by passmaster16:
I always liked the fact that I could set the receipient's platform which is very useful for Windows users. Mail used to send two files, say a word document and a resource fork. I didn't like this because the file names were the same. I'm not sure if Mail's behavior is the same now. I'm sure that Mail users can comment.

When adding an attachment in Mail.app, the finder dialog that appears to select the file has a checkbox at the bottom entitled, "send windows friendly attachments." This option will only send the one file.

[tonton]

I use Entourage because it automatically downloads all incoming messages and deletes them from your server, AND keeps them in the inbox.

[midwinter]

I use Entourage because when someone at work sends me a Groupwise appointment, Mail routes it to the correct folder but fails to indicate that the folder has an unread item in it. After I missed about 3 meetings because of that, I switched to Entourage. Additionally, iCal for some bizarre reason registers Groupwise appointments as 6 hours off. The time label shows up correctly, but the event shows up 6 hours late.

Entourage also syncs up flawlessly with my iPaq.

[typoon]

Originally posted by tonton:
I use Entourage because it automatically downloads all incoming messages and deletes them from your server, AND keeps them in the inbox.

I haven't had issues with Mail.app not doing that.

[D'Espice]

Originally posted by typoon:
I haven't had issues with Mail.app not doing that.

I was just about to say, Mail.app does that too.

[philm]

Originally posted by tonton:
I use Entourage because it automatically downloads all incoming messages and deletes them from your server, AND keeps them in the inbox.

You can easily set this up in Mail if you want. In fact, I really like Mail's capabilities when it comes to deciding which mail is (and is not) deleted from the server. I choose to leave all the mail which is in my Inbox on the server (so I can pick it up from other sites) but my e-mail lists/listserv/majordomo is routed into another folder and is automatically deleted - I'm not bothered about picking that up elsewhere.

[USNA91]

Originally posted by Chandy:
PocketMac syncs ipaq and Entourage

Wish I'd known that before buying MissingSynch (which doesn't!).

[buffalolee]

I would love to use Entourage but....

Mail allows multiple SMTP servers. So when I bring my laptop from work and back, I can still send e-mails without a problem.

iCal is so much prettier than Entourage Cal

Entourage can group addresses. Address Book can't which is a big no no. I sometimes need to filter my contacts by family, friends, etc.

[Timothy Maxwell]

I have used both Mail and Entourage. Mail is much easier to use. It's faster and very responsive. Entourage is a hog but it is a very capable email program. I would rather use mail but Entourage is better at sorting my incoming mail.

If I didn't have hundreds of email messages to sort through from the many clients that I have to keep in touch with on a daily basis, I would definitely use Mail over Entourage.

[Fusion]

Originally posted by buffalolee:
I would love to use Entourage but....

Mail allows multiple SMTP servers. So when I bring my laptop from work and back, I can still send e-mails without a problem.

iCal is so much prettier than Entourage Cal

Entourage can group addresses. Address Book can't which is a big no no. I sometimes need to filter my contacts by family, friends, etc.

When you set Mail.app up to do multiple smtp servers, do you still get the message that it can't send with one and then you just hit "use selected server" to resend the message, or do you have it someway setup to work in the background and just use whatever server works? I have having the exact issue you describe right now, going back and forth to work, university, home, etc.. and not being able to use one outgoing server at one place and another at the other.