eWEEK Labs' Cameron Sturdevant has been making the conversion from the PC to the Mac, but there's one thing that keeps him coming back for Windows: Entourage is a second-class e-mail client.I locked it in a drawer. I left it in the lab. I tried to give it back to
IT. But at the end of the day, I resurrected my old Windows laptop so I could
run Outlook to get my e-mail and wouldn't have to use Entourage
In my ongoing quest to “go Mac,” e-mail has been a real sticking point. I
have found Entourage unusable for day-to-day work, and so have had to come up
with some ways around it.
Using Parallels on my Mac mini worked OK, but if I were in a real enterprise
setting, that would be a fair amount of licensing.
I tried using Outlook Web Access. When accessing OWA from the Safari 4
public beta (which I like a lot) or Firefox 3.0.10 from Mac OS X running on my
mini, I get the crippled Outlook Web interface. No search, no rule creation, no
drag and drop to create a new contact (also not available in IE). Basically,
OWA in a non-IE browser is a read and write experience that is not sufficiently
capable for daily work use.
OWA really works well only from an Internet Explorer 8 browser instance. And
that means back to Parallels or VMware Fusion and running a Windows guest on my
Mac. After looking around, my only real hope is Snow Leopard and its promised
integration with Microsoft Exchange.
I know users who redirect their Exchange mail to Gmail. In an unregulated
business with minimal IT resources, that seems to work. It would probably even
work for me if I wasn't so old-fashioned. I still use my Ziff Davis e-mail
address to get quick access to the sources I use on a daily basis.
Since I don't want to change my work e-mail address and I use a Mac for my
daily work, I really felt up against the wall. And that's why I brought my
trusty Lenovo ThinkPad X31 out of retirement to serve as my e-mail terminal.
The Windows licenses are already paid for. The device has enough horsepower
(really pony power, at this point in its life) to run Outlook. And even though
I have an Apple Cinema Display, I do like using the laptop for my e-mail,
leaving more room for applications on my Mac desktop system.
Why am I going to all this trouble?
Entourage is a second-class e-mail client. Since I've already griped about
it, I'll leave well enough alone except to say this: I get a lot of e-mail.
Some e-mail is more important to me than other e-mail. In fact, some e-mail is
so important that I want to see it before any other e-mail in my in-box.
For example, e-mail from my eWEEK colleagues is routed, via an Exchange
rule, to a folder called "00 EWEEK," so that the folder is always at
the top of my list. I also create rules on a temporary basis so that e-mail messages
pertaining to a product that I'm actively testing get shunted into "0000
Active Test," and e-mail messages from the sources that I've developed
over the years get put into "0000 Active Priority."
E-mail destined for Active Test changes all the time. The Active Priority
list changes more slowly, but it does change. These rules have worked well for
me over the years, and Entourage’s inability to play by these rules is what
pushed me back to the PC for e-mail.
All of this is why I am so anxious to see Snow Leopard in action. I'm hoping
that the next major release of the Mac OS X operating system will yield the
full-fledged e-mail integration experience that I must have to get my work done
on a Mac.
Now, I'm new enough to the Mac-Windows war zone that I don't fully know
whether it’s Apple or Microsoft that has the power to make my dream come true.
I'm starting to care at this point because I really like not worrying (too)
much about the security of my Mac mini. While I was working on this story, my
Windows system kicked off a virus scan (as it does every Wednesday at 2 p.m.). While the scan was grinding away—chewing
up CPU bandwidth and tripping up disk performance—my Mac was placidly letting
me do all the productive work I could desire, except easily use my e-mail.
During the "dark time," as I call my weekly anti-virus check, I
use OWA. I'd like to see that experience significantly improved for non-IE
browsers—again, so I can use it from Safari or Firefox with all the features
I'm used to getting if I use IE. For full-fledged enterprise adoption of the
Mac, the e-mail hurdle is a very real barrier.
| | Reader Comments: Entourage Is the Big Pothole on the Road to the Mac | | >>> Post your comment now!
| | One more thingI should've added that Mail.app is a better email client for casual email users than Entourage. If you're not going to take advantage of the... Posted At: 06-06-09 By: Kevin Edwards | | | | | | | | | | | | Another optionIf your organization isn't willing to turn on imap to allow you to run Mail.app (which, from what I've seen, meets most of your needs), Entourage... Posted At: 05-27-09 By: Alphaman | | | | | | DittoI have to agree with previous sentiments. If you're only looking for e-mail support (i.e. not worrying about calendar, tasks, custom mail forms,... Posted At: 05-26-09 By: Mike C. | | | | | | lazy switchersNo wonder you're having trouble switching, its because you're fixated on Microsoft. Both Outlook and Entourage are cr@p, move to Mail and get back to... Posted At: 05-26-09 By: rayjay | | | | | | I agree with HansI have has good experience with the Apple Mail app using 5 different and complimentary email addresses including AOL, gMail and others. It is quite... Posted At: 05-22-09 By: Bill Hess | | | | | | Agreed in all particularsI'm a Mac guy, and want to use my Mac on our network at work, but we're on Exchange 2003 and our system administrator will not, for love nor money,... Posted At: 05-14-09 By: Jason Packer | | | | | | >>> Post your comment now! | | | | | |
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