Looking forward to reading your list of comparisons between Mail and the Big E.

The MS Mac BU has sped the app up a LOT and it now has Spotlight integration.

I really never trucked to well with Mail.app’s interface and it’s handling of Rules.

To Entourage’s credit, moving the mail, accounts and rules into Entourage was amazingly smooth.

So far so good.

The Hawk Wings readers are not a very talkative bunch. They tend to come, grab what they are after and go. Which is fine, but not very helpful for you.

So you might not get an answer here. I have never used them, so can’t answer either. Sorry.

Have you tried one of the more active Mac forums? You might have more luck there.

But there is one important reason I am still on the fence. Spotlight. It can’t index the Entourage database, and that’s a HUGE deal for me. It’s one of the main reasons I wanted to give Mail.app a try and one reason I have yet to just drop everything and switch back.

I think I remember reading somewhere that the Microsoft’s Macinstosh Business Unit has said they won’t be offering Spotlight support in Entourage anytime soon.

Maybe now that Microsoft is making tentative steps towards opening up its Office 12 XML standards, there will be a change of heart of this front as well. Maybe.

Then I had POP3 access and used Eudora for a while. That ended pretty much when (1) I had more than one email account to check and (2) Outlook Express for Macintosh was released and handled multiple accounts.

Eudora… ugh. Shit, piled on shit, with shit for a base. UGH! What a horrible piece of software.

Outlook Express for the Mac was a great product when you looked around and saw what was available at the time. Sushami was a great little app, but payware. So, Outlook Express was quite welcome.

Ther was Claris Mail (or Email, or whatever it was) that was nice but way too expensive and way too convoluted. Yet, THAT is what ended up being the grounding for Entourage actually. That team ended up being bought by Microsoft and making Entourage out of that code. But clearly they used the Outlook Express interface as well.

So, my use of Entourage goes back to the days before it was Entourage (i.e. before it had built in calendaring basically - and well before it had built in project management) in to the Outlook Express for Macintosh days.

Anyway, that certainly has some impact. Still, I am always open to trying something new. That’s why I wanted to give Mail.app a try. I use it on the iBook in the living room, the iMac at work, but I think overall Entourage works better for organizing emails.

But… there is one important reason I am still on the fence. Spotlight. It can’t index the Entourage database, and that’s a HUGE deal for me. It’s one of the main reasons I wanted to give Mail.app a try and one reason I have yet to just drop everything and switch back.

I once tried to use Entourage, early on in my Mac life, after so many people told me that it was my only option if I was _serious_ about email.

It’s just a shame that you can’t do your email with your eyes closed :-)

I was back to Mail in a flash.

As said, one of the worst parts is Mail.app just playing random havoc with rules. I also find it very odd that you have to dig so deep to get to the rules.

Now, let me say, Entourage’s rules work better, but their organization of rules is a mess. It’s just a big, long list with no capability to organize the rules in any way except by protocol type (POP, IMAP) intead of having a little bit of structure that would let you keep rules organized in the same way folders work in Entourage.

I love iCal, though, and it does really but me that Apple either doesn’t understand or care about the importance of ntegration between email and calendars.

But hey, I gave it the ol’ college try. :) Six months wasn’t a bad test run. I think it was a fair test by fair, and Mail.app didn’t meet my needs, so, back to the Beasts in 2006.