best e-mail client for MS exchange?

[NEoPHYte31]

Hi folks. I've got a whole bunch of questions, so I've decided to put them in a numbered list so they can easily be answered.

1. What would be the best e-mail application to use if the user has both a corporate e-mail account running off a MS Exchange server (IMAP) and a standard POP3 account? The exchange server is not only used for e-mail, but also for contacts and calendar information.

2. With regards to the corporate IMAP account, am I pretty much stuck to MS Entourage or are there better options?

3. Can entourage simultaenously handle both accounts seamlessly or would it be better to divide the work up into different apps (ie. Entourage for the corporate IMAP acccount, Apple's Mail for the POP3 account)?

4. Can Mail handle corporate accounts running off an exchange server? If so, how does it compare with MS Entourage and can it read the contact / calendar info off the server?


I'm trying to help out a potential switcher and any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[baummer]

Well, Exchange was designed to work hand-in-hand with Outlook/Entourage. Using another application will severely limit your options and make any sort of workgrouping rather difficult. Stick with Entourage, surely you can get past its quirks. I've actually found it to be a very sufficient program for what it does. I'm the only mac user at my office and using Entourage to connect to the Exchange server makes it pretty much hassle-free.

EDIT: Forgoto to mention that Entourage is a full-service application. It can easily handle multiple accounts under different protocols. For example, I have several IMAP accounts and POP3 accounts configured.

 

[matticus008]

Hi folks. I've got a whole bunch of questions, so I've decided to put them in a numbered list so they can easily be answered.

1. What would be the best e-mail application to use if the user has both a corporate e-mail account running off a MS Exchange server (IMAP) and a standard POP3 account? The exchange server is not only used for e-mail, but also for contacts and calendar information.

2. With regards to the corporate IMAP account, am I pretty much stuck to MS Entourage or are there better options?

3. Can entourage simultaenously handle both accounts seamlessly or would it be better to divide the work up into different apps (ie. Entourage for the corporate IMAP acccount, Apple's Mail for the POP3 account)?

4. Can Mail handle corporate accounts running off an exchange server? If so, how does it compare with MS Entourage and can it read the contact / calendar info off the server?


I'm trying to help out a potential switcher and any help would be greatly appreciated!

Yeah, unfortunately Entourage 2004 is the only application that will do what you need. You can probably get Mail to work with the email accounts and if you jump through a few hoops, you can probably even import your contacts. But in terms of doing everything in one place (mail, calendar, exchange server authentication, contacts), the only real choice is Entourage (or Outlook running in Virtual PC, but that's an expensive solution unless you already have the software).

Apple Mail is NOT compatible with Microsoft Exchange. But it does work with POP3 and IMAP mail accounts (IMAP is a little bit sketchy, though).