[Centris650]

I just got MS:Office for Teachers and I actually kind of like Entourage. I like having my addresses, email and calendar all together. I especially like the looks of the calendar program.

[-Q-]

Nothing to feel guilty about at all. It's a good app and if it does what you need, use it w/out remorse. Not all MS stuff sucks. Just most of it.

[Eug]

Entourage is way better than iCal and Mail. However, it does not work with iSync. (I'd prefer to use iSync, to sync with my iPod.)

[mrmister]

I use the lovely iPod It to sync Entourage and my iPod.

Entourage is good stuff--until something better exists, I'll be using it.

[Centris650]

Originally posted by Eug:
Entourage is way better than iCal and Mail. However, it does not work with iSync. (I'd prefer to use iSync, to sync with my iPod.)

Oh, I didn't think about that....Hmmmm. I'll have to give that some thought before I transfer everything over to Entourage.

[Peter]

Originally posted by Centris650:
I just got MS:Office for Teachers and I actually kind of like Entourage. I like having my addresses, email and calendar all together. I especially like the looks of the calendar program.

s'okay we'll give you the attention you want

[Eug]

Originally posted by Centris650:
Oh, I didn't think about that....Hmmmm. I'll have to give that some thought before I transfer everything over to Entourage.

Entourage does work with Palm desktop though, with my Visor.

[cpac]

Originally posted by Eug:
Entourage is way better than iCal and Mail.

Or not, depending on your personal use habits.

[engaged]

I have always used Entourage and love it, though asmit that I've never used Mail. Also synch everything perfectly with my Clie.

I have both a PC and a Mac, and they both have the latest versions of Office installed. Without any doubt, Officer v.X on the Mac is better and nicer to use. So much more attractive.

[Sage]

Don't feel guilty. While I hate Windows to no end, I really like Microsoft's Office suite, and Entourage is a permanent fixture in my Dock, because like you and many others, I think it's nice having everything tied into one app.

[driven]

Entourage rocks. I also use Outlook (Windows) on a daily basis and I like Entourage far far better.

[maxintosh]

I like Address Book, but I HATE iCal. If Entourage worked with iSync, I'd use it. I really hope iCal 2.0 is easier to use/navigate. I just can't get used to its clunky interface. I'd rather Graffiti everything into my Palm.

[Gul Banana]

*supports Entourage in a corporate environment*
*is irritated often by the random bugs in its POP3 implementation*
Other than that, though, it seems fine.

[::maroma::]

Originally posted by Gul Banana:
*supports Entourage in a corporate environment*
*is irritated often by the random bugs in its POP3 implementation*
Other than that, though, it seems fine.

Are you using the Exchange Server feature? I'm curious to know how that's working. The company I work for is so slow at adopting, we won't get Entourage for another year. We're stuck with Outlook in Classic.

[DVD Plaza]

Nothing wrong with Entourage at all, it's a damn fine application - in many many many ways it's far better than Outlook. Just a shame it doesn't have Exchange support (the POS Microsoft released is hardly Exchange support).

I've tried Apple's mail.app a few times but I can't stand it - it's more like an application designed for children.

[PubGuy]

Mail programs are like Browsers....it's all personal taste, there is no right or wrong answer, only opinions.

That being said, here is my opinion:

I was using Entourage for a long time...but missed the integration of the global address book feature with the iApps. I also had tried Apples mail.app a few times early on and thought it lacking (big time). BUT--I decided to give it another shot.

The mail.app with 10.2.6 is much better than the earlier ones. It also has the advantage of every account and every folder you add to it is saved as a separate mailbox (in an industry standard format). I've had big problems with Entourages monolithic database -- if it gets screwed up you loose EVERYTHING!

What really pushed me to mail.app was SPAM. I was creating rules in Entourage daily trying to get rid of spam from my main mailbox -- viewing the "raw source", looking for domains or sender or content -- whatever to distinguish it without being too spacific. No matter what i did with rules, I still ended with more spam in my in box. It was the classic case (as with Windows) of me spending more time working the problem and not getting to business. When I converted my mail over to mail.app, I also had a "junk mail folder" in Entourage that contained about 100 junk mails. When I launched mail.app, I went to that folderm highlighted all the messages and told it that it was Junk. I then switched the Junk mail filter from Training mode to Automatic. After using it for anout 2 more weeks and training it on a few that got past the initial filter, I'm to a point where I have maybe 1 junk mail that gets into my in box every 4 weeks or so. Far superior to anything I was able to get with Entourage...and if one does show up in the inbox, all I have to do is single-click on it and then click Junk, and its gone and I won't see it again next time (versus all the steps required to add a new rule to Entourage).

Address book: Address book does not support "catagories", but they use "groups" instead. It fully integrates with iChat and Mail.app and is available to other apps as a system wide address book. The Group thing is fine, but I wish it had an easy way to locate "Ungrouped - i.e. uncatagorized" names. Right now there is no way to do it :-(

iCal: iCal has also come a long way and the preview of the latest Panther version looks like it will take away any other concerns. Again, this is available as a system-wide calendar program. The next version of QuickBooks for the Mac will also support posting important dates right into iCal ... I think that is also a feature of Quicken 2004. Another really nice thing is the multiple calendars. I've got 7 different calendars now (each one a separate file). I can view all at once, or simply uncheck the one I don't want. You can also post calendars on-line

The other thing that always happened to me with Entourage is that the last view that I was in (address, mail, calendar) was almost never the next view I wanted to see. In other words, if I had just checked my calendar then continued my work and need to look up a phone number, there was always an extra step involved. With the apps separate, you just click the app. It may seem like a small thing, but for some that is the advantage of separate apps versus monolithic apps.

Again, all this is what you get used to and what works best for your work flow. There is no right or wrong answer, just personal preferences. In my case, the superior Junk mail handling in mail was well worth it. I also wanted to take full advantage of the system-wide features in address book and ical. To do this, I gave up a few features I liked better in Entourage. That being said, I just ordered a data cable for my cell phone and by next week will be able to use iSync to sync my Address Book to my phone ... can't do that with Entourage. YMMV

[mpmchugh]

Originally posted by PubGuy:
What really pushed me to mail.app was SPAM.

If you use Entourage and need a good spam filter (in addition ot Entourage's Junk filter) check out SpamSieve:

http://www.c-command.com/spamsieve/

It uses similiar filtering technology to Apple's Mail and works with all the other major Mac Email clients.

I've been using it for a year now, and it accurately catches 99% of my spam... and I get a ton. It's $20 to register, but well worth it.

Worth a try.

-mpm

[Gul Banana]

Originally posted by ::maroma:::
Are you using the Exchange Server feature? I'm curious to know how that's working. The company I work for is so slow at adopting, we won't get Entourage for another year. We're stuck with Outlook in Classic.

We're all-Mac, so we don't use Exchange Server - we use Now Up to Date & Contact for similar functionality. A lot office workers are still using older iMacs, too, so they're all using OS 9 - but using Entourage anyway.

[bbales]

I started using Entourage when Mail wouldn't import my old Claris e-mailer files, with the proper names and categories. I've stayed with it, though I've flirted with mail occasionally, because it works so very well.

That said -- here's a warning. Be faithful about backing up the database!!!! Inexplicably, about a month ago, after a restart because the machine was running kind of slowly, Enrouage reverted to a brand-new state. The entire database was gone, gone, gone. Fortunately, I'd just backed up the night before. It took me a while, because there are some hidden moves involved (did a search on macNN to find out the steps involved, I might add) -- but that evening I managed to restore my database from the backed-up copy. So back up, back up, back up.