Potential Switcher Question (email)

I've been a devoted PC fan and user since the beginning. However, yesterday I clicked on a link in a forum and ended up with some wicked spyware/keystroke tracker/open 20 porn windows at once thing. I've spent a ton of time chasing this monster around my laptop and I'm really getting tired of crap like this. I take every possible precaution to prevent stuff like this from happening, but I know I'll end up reformatting my drive to be sure it's completely gone. Obviously this is a huge waste of my time. That being said, I'm thinking about giving Mac a try *shudder* due to its stability and resistance to spyware and viruses. My biggest concern is the email client, due to the fact that I live my life out of Outlook. So, on to the question... Is there a way to get Outlook to run on a Mac? If not, is there a 3rd party client that works the same way? I really need something that will let me work out of personal folders within the client. Additionally, I currently have 12 separate emails that Outlook pings and brings into their own inbox via rules I have set up.

Any advice/recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Ryan

mail is i nice program, and it comes with the mac, its very similar to outlook. and works with any email service provider i believe, i have my gmail account through it

Does it allow you to work out of personal folders like Outlook? Can anyone post a screen shot of their "mail" program in action?

You could always go for Entourage, which is MS's mail program for Office on Mac. I think it's great, but I never really used Outlook when I used windows. But from my limited experience with Outlook, it works just about the same way.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/mail/

That should give you a good idea of what mail can do. You can set up rules exactly like you would in Outlook, use personal folders and have as many accounts as you want

Mail does not have anywhere near the functionality of Outlook (the full program), it's more like Outlook Express with a few extras. Even when you use iCal and Mail together, it's still not quite Outlook.

Entourage is much more complete, with the ability to link tasks, emails, calendar entries and track the progress of tasks/projects like you can in Outlook. The only issue with Entourage is that if you often use webites and embedded calendar links to go straight to Outlook or iCal, Entourage deals with these badly, if at all. Also, if you use Entourage 2004 on an Intel Mac, it's a little slow because it runs under Rosetta.

I've recently switched and find that Mail is a good replacement for Outlook. I did not use calendar features etc, only multiple mailboxes (5 to be exact). Mail is able to use rules in the same way as Outlook to easily filter all my emails into the relevant mailbox.

I think that the MS-Office for Mac 2004 version of Entourage is likely the closest to what you want. Mac Mail is specifically an email client. Outlook is a full featured ...well, I am not sure what you call this sort of program, but it does email, task tracking, scheduling, calendaring, contacts.... LOTs of stuff. Entourage is like that, but I suspect it must be functionally reduced vs. Outlook since it is not named "Outlook for Mac", but rather, Entourage.

Mail will have even more features in Leopard when it's released next year.

Mail is a very good email client, but if you need some of the things Outlook does, like has been said, try Entourage.

Thanks for the replies so far.

Have any of you used Thunderbird for mac?

I used thunderbird for a while. It is almost exactly the same as the Windows version and does all of the rules/folders that Mail and Outlook do

Like Trpnmonkey said, Thunderbird on OSX is the same program it is on Windows XP. It does everything the windows version does. Very good email client.

I use Outlook 2003 on my work pc and Entourage 2004 at home and honestly I cannot tell much of a difference, except I like Entourage more. It seems to work seemlessly with everything, has junk email filtering just like Outlook, interfaces with all my Exchange, POP3, and webmail accounts all right there without me having to do anything except open it up and read my mail. The contacts address book is better than the Outlook one - for me anyway. It also syncs with iCal and the Mac address book too if you want it to, and also interfaces with my iPod and Motorola Razr phone so that my datebooks and contacts are everywhere I need them. I'm actually an Entourage fan although I really dislike MS Windows after dealing with viruses and spyware on pcs all day (Im a school tech director). I get emails with viruses attached all the time on my Mac, and they just sit there until I delete them and I never worry about them since they can do nothing to me.