Mail and Calendar Program

Hi,

This is my first post here so I am not too sure if this is the right place to post but here goes.

I am planning on buying a MacBook Pro when the new Mac OS X 10.5 comes out in the UK. My current PC is on its last legs and I really can't wait much longer.

I have never had a mac before and I the last time I used one was back in the mid to late 90s when I was a young teenage student learning at Graphic Design!

I currently use Outlook 2003 (not express) for my email needs. I use the calendar features and I have a pop3 and smtp email account.

I really like the look of iCal does that work with the iCalendar standards like Outlook does?

Whats better for email Thunderbird (on a mac) or the program you get with the OS, from what I have been told its named Mail.

Can Thunderbird and iCal work together?

I also get a lot of spam (like 50 a day ) does either come with a good spam filter or can you guys tell me of a good one thats either free or does not cost huge sums of money.

Info regarding Thunderbird - this is an excellent piece of software that most certainly includes junk filters - once activated you may find that a few messages slip through if you click on them and then mark them as junk Thunderbird adds the info to its' list of rules and will identify any future similar mail as junk automatically - it is very good. I use Thunderbird all the time and deals with 90% of my junk email - the odd one slips through but like I said - just mark it as junk and Thunderbird knows what to do the next time anything like that or from that address comes to you it'll be automatically dumped in the junk mail folder or the trash depending on your personal prefs.

Thunderbird does not have a calendar built in - but this Thunderbird extension - Lightning is very good and will give you the same email+calendar package you have with Outlook.

Thunderbird is very easy to setup multiple accounts using POP & IMAP and you use SMTP with Thunderbird as well.

Not sure about Thunderbird & iCal working together.

However if you're waiting for Leopard - check out this link: Updated Mail in Leopard

Much ado about To-Dos

Forget manually entering a new item to your to-do list every time an email hits your inbox. With Mail for Leopard, simply click an email or note to create a new To-Do. Include a due date, an alarm, or assign priorities. To-Dos you create in Mail automagically appear in iCal, complete with any edits or additions you make.

Click to expand...

From that - I take it that Mail & iCal are integrated which may be worth trying before getting Thunderbird and Lightning.

Thanks for you advice.

Outlook has a very poor email filtering system and catches nothing (thats a lie it does get about 10 out of 50 a day) no matter how many email addresses I add to my blocked list/spam list (I don't have a stand alone spam filter program)!

I didn't know that Lighting and Sunbird existed but both look good.

I persoanlly really liked the look of iCal and it's design. Outlook looks so bland and dull.

Have you had any experience of using Mail? If so what do you prefer (by the sounds of it it's Thunderbird). I was looking on Wikipedia and noticed that some people have reported that their are problems with OS X and Thunderbird is this true?

I use Mail, iCal, and Address Book all the time and have been very happy with them. They do everything I ever needed from Outlook. They also sync pretty well to my Blackberry, which is the most important thing in the world to me.

Mail has some built-in spam filtering capability, but I use a server-side program through my hosting company to deal with spam so I'd be a poor judge on Mail's stand alone suitability. I have no experience with Thunderbird/Lightning; nor have I used Entourage (the Microsoft Mac-equivalent to Outlook, which is part of the Office 2004:Mac package).