Mail V Entourage

I've just upgraded to leopard on my MBP. At the same time I've installed office 2008. As a switcher of six months standing I have never used entourage. i was quite happy with mail and found the option to create smart mailboxes a real boon. But for some reason mail is now asking me questions about my pop account every time I get mail. Mail can't verify the identity - and it's saying the certificate for the server is invalid. Now I'm sure I can probably work out a solution [though if anyone knows what's going on please shout] But for the heck of it set up the same account in Entourage and it's working fine.

So which is the best program? What are the differences? Can I create smart mailboxes in Entourage? What are the pros and cons of both?

No opinions?

I'm also a switcher, it's been just two months for me. I upgraded to Office 2008 a couple days ago. Entourage looks interesting and is much more similar to Outlook, which I use at work. However, after learning to use Mail, I don't think I'll switch to Entourage. I love the way Mail and iCal sync and I like the clean, simple look of Mail.
Just my $0.02

I would recommend Mail. It is so beautifully integrated with Safari, iCal and so on. Also, on a purely partisan level, Entourage is a product of the "evil Microsoft empire"! Don't walk away, run away!!

I agree with mac57,
and if entourage is as slow on a mac as office is than you'd be better off using ACTUAL mail, as in, letters and stamps! ;D

The beauty of Mac OS X is the way everything integrates. And what with email being a big thing in most peoples lives, along with electronic calendars and contact lists, it makes sense to keep everything Apple. Just in the same way I'd recommend Outlook for a Windows PC

iCal, Address Book, Mail and iSync all work together nicely and anything that can sync with Mac - like your iPod, iPhone etc - can read from these apps. Changing to Entourage means that stops working.

All IMO, of course

mac57 said:

I would recommend Mail. It is so beautifully integrated with Safari, iCal and so on. Also, on a purely partisan level, Entourage is a product of the "evil Microsoft empire"! Don't walk away, run away!!

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I understand how Mail is integrated with iCal and Address Book but how is it integrated with Safari? Sorry, I'm a new Mac user.

Doug in Alaska said:

I understand how Mail is integrated with iCal and Address Book but how is it integrated with Safari? Sorry, I'm a new Mac user.

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It's not, at least not any more than any other e-mail client

For the record, there are quite a few people on these forums who prefer Entourage to Mail. But honestly, you'll just need to try both and see which works best for you. They are both great apps, just do things slightly different. You'll need to see which works better for you.

RobM said:

iCal, Address Book, Mail and iSync all work together nicely and anything that can sync with Mac - like your iPod, iPhone etc - can read from these apps. Changing to Entourage means that stops working.

All IMO, of course

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There are many third party plugins that will integrate iSync and Entourage.

To the OP, read this thread. See if some of the solutions help. Is this the issue you are having with Mail?

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6342970

Thanks for that link dtravis7. I've been messing with entourage so had mail offline for a few days. That's fixed it now.

My initial impression is that I prefer Mail. But at the moment I use Thunderbird for my second email account which is the one that gets more spam. What I may well do is use entourage for that and mail for my main account.

Fatboydim said:

Thanks for that link dtravis7. I've been messing with entourage so had mail offline for a few days. That's fixed it now.

My initial impression is that I prefer Mail. But at the moment I use Thunderbird for my second email account which is the one that gets more spam. What I may well do is use entourage for that and mail for my main account.

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Any specific reason why you need two separate clients? Both Mail and Entourage support multiple accounts.

I use Entourage @ work for the purpose of exchange server. My personal email, I prefer Mail. That is the beauty of this whole thing, there are choices and people can use what they prefer. Use whatever email client you like the most.

A little off topic but it kind of fits as well.

Would people recommend mail over thunderbird as well?

the8thark said:

A little off topic but it kind of fits as well.

Would people recommend mail over thunderbird as well?

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Thunderbird is an excellent Mail Client but for OSX I prefer Mail because of it's integration with the rest of OSX. I think the Spam Filtering is better in Thunderbird though, but Mail in 10.5 is getting there.

Doug in Alaska said:

I understand how Mail is integrated with iCal and Address Book but how is it integrated with Safari? Sorry, I'm a new Mac user.

Click to expand...

Well, my favorite bit of integration is this: suppose you are surfing the web and you find a story or a web page that you really want to point out to some friends. If you are using Safari and Mail, you simply type CMD+I. Safari saves off the page, opens Mail and loads the page into an email for you, ready for you to address and send. This is a little thing, but one you will make lots of use of I bet!

Yep, you're right, I never thought about that. I'm a 'clicker' and many times I've used File ➛ Mail Contents of This Page.
Thanks, Doug in AK

In reply to your question Schweb. There are a number of reasons I like to use two clients. One, is that my most important email - work emails - stay relatively uncluttered and spam free. The account I use for signing up to forums and anything else web related is liable to get more spam for obvious reasons. As good as the filters are getting, the occasional offensive email leaks through. Because my work email is only used for that purpose it is almost spam free and I can use it with confidence.

Also I find having two clients means that I can email myself which is often very useful if I want to send a document from my desktop to my MBP or vice versa. It's also a great way to backup those important mails in case of corruption.

Hi, I am a switcher for about a couple of weeks. I have entourage and office 8. I was liking entourage and it was real windowy. Ran pretty smooth. I then wanted integration with iCal. I switched to Mail. Mail seems very complicated to me and not to user friendly. It also kept taking my accounts "offline". It would start asking me if I wanted to go online with my mailboxes. Well I like to take my email and drag and drop it to the calendar program and setup a schedule. I don't know if mail can do this. I used to do it on my linux box with kmail. Just drag and drop the email on the date you need to do the action. Very seemless. Does anyone know if iCal can do this? I iCal also kept putting the incorrect dates on my Ipod Touch.