e-mail programs: Thunderbird vs Mail vs Entourage

[fjs08]

<<The monolithic application paradigm is an artifact of a bygone era.<<

Well, said, but I don't agree. Obviously, the majority of the computing world doesn't either, or Office would be off the shelfs. Diversification may be great in the investment world, but when it comes to computing, I like to keep all my eggs in one basket. A very integrated basket.

>> There is simply no need to create a monolithic app with the functionality of iCal, Address Book, and Mail. You can leave all three apps open if you like. They work flawlessly together as it is.<<

I've thought about leaving them all open, even having them open when I start up OSX. Not a bad idea.

But working flawlessly is another question all together. I don't really see them working together well at all. If they did what I wanted, and did it together I'd be the first one to use them. And they are far from flawless. I love Mail, but iCal really needs a lot of work. And Address book is even less appealing.

Frank

 

[bousozoku]

<<The monolithic application paradigm is an artifact of a bygone era.<<

Well, said, but I don't agree. Obviously, the majority of the computing world doesn't either, or Office would be off the shelfs. Diversification may be great in the investment world, but when it comes to computing, I like to keep all my eggs in one basket. A very integrated basket.

>> There is simply no need to create a monolithic app with the functionality of iCal, Address Book, and Mail. You can leave all three apps open if you like. They work flawlessly together as it is.<<

I've thought about leaving them all open, even having them open when I start up OSX. Not a bad idea.

But working flawlessly is another question all together. I don't really see them working together well at all. If they did what I wanted, and did it together I'd be the first one to use them. And they are far from flawless. I love Mail, but iCal really needs a lot of work. And Address book is even less appealing.

Frank

iCal is more visually appealing than effective. I think Mozilla's Sunbird project will come to grips with the situation in a better way but only eventually. Scheduling is a difficult application. I don't think I've ever seen one application that does it well. Years ago, I had developed a new interface for scheduling using my own TUI (Textual User Interface) on text terminals.

It seems that the problem is generally that there is scheduling for the large enterprise or for the individual but not for the small work group that's easy to use.

 

[mkrishnan]

Well, said, but I don't agree. Obviously, the majority of the computing world doesn't either, or Office would be off the shelfs.

Office is really not an example of a monolithic application. In fact, OpenOffice is moreso than Office is. The apps from Office are at least as separate as Apple's apps are, although, granted, Outlook combines several features. But Outlook, good or bad, is really probably not why the majority of Office licenses get sold.

But working flawlessly is another question all together. I don't really see them working together well at all. If they did what I wanted, and did it together I'd be the first one to use them. And they are far from flawless. I love Mail, but iCal really needs a lot of work. And Address book is even less appealing.

I don't disagree ... the apps do need work, Frank. But are you talking about issues of them not working, or not working together? That's two different things. Are there things for which the relevant features exist in the individual apps, but their failure to communicate prevents you from doing them, whereas if they were one app like Outlook, you could do what you wanted to do?

 

[fjs08]

>>But are you talking about issues of them not working, or not working together?<<

In my experience, and believe me, I'd love to go ALL Apple if I could, iCal and Address book just don't work well for me. It may be my inability to really understand the programs. I was an Apple fan in the 80's who went Windows because of business needs. So I probably know Office better than the Apple applications. But I've spend many evenings working with iCal and Address book, only to come away frustrated.

>>Are there things for which the relevant features exist in the individual apps, but their failure to communicate prevents you from doing them, <<

No. The lack of communication between programs isn't what bothers me. I just don't find iCal and Address Book to be as easy to use as their Entourage counterparts.

>>whereas if they were one app like Outlook, you could do what you wanted to do?<<

As they stand now, I doubt putting them together in one package would be sufficient.

Calendar in Entourage has an ease and flow about it that I find lacking in iCal.
Mail has a very fluid feel, even more so than Entourage. Plus, I find Mail a very soft and aesthetic application. It's a joy to use. iCal and Address book still frustrate me.
If there were no Office, I'm sure I could get along with the OSX applications Mail, iCal and Address Book, and be pretty satisfied. I'm just currently more satisfied with Entourage.
Frank

 

[MisterMe]

....

Well, said, but I don't agree. Obviously, the majority of the computing world doesn't either, or Office would be off the shelfs. Diversification may be great in the investment world, but when it comes to computing, I like to keep all my eggs in one basket. A very integrated basket.

There is an old saying: "If 50,000 Frenchmen say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing." I am sure that the "majority" that you are talking about use Microsoft Office on Microsoft Windows. It is in Microsoft's interests to have users stuck in monolithic environments. That doesn't mean that they are not stuck in a bygone era.

But working flawlessly is another question all together. I don't really see them working together well at all. If they did what I wanted, and did it together I'd be the first one to use them. And they are far from flawless. I love Mail, but iCal really needs a lot of work. And Address book is even less appealing.

Frank

Frank, they can't work properly if you don't enter the correct data. Mail's address book is Address Book. Save file corruption issues, it is impossible for Mail and Address Book not to work flawlessly together if you enter your contact names and addresses properly.

 

[Reckless]

I'm a new iBook owner and have been playing around with Mail.app as I don't normally use e-mail clients. My main e-mail has always been my hotmail account as I've had it for years and tend to change ISPs so never bother to use the one's I have with them unless absolutely essential (some forums I belong to etc won't accept hotmail as a contact point).

Anyway, I digress. I just wanted to point out that Mail.app does work with hotmail with the earlier plugin mentioned. It was a little fiddly to set up as it kept on hanging but the website posted a workaround that gave me success.

I have two criticisms of the program: firstly, I like each mail when reading to open in a new window automatically so that it's full screen. I have to do this individually as there appears to be no way to get the full window to display the "next" mail in the list. You have to shut down the message by deleting and then opening the next mail.

Secondly, on my hotmail, I've set up separate folders such as "orders" "correspondence" "details" etc. Mail.app has brought the folders over from Hotmail and I can add mails to those folders in mail but I can't then get Mail to sync backwards to hotmail and get it to update my online folders. This means that I have to do this online with hotmail before downloading them to Mail.

As an aside, I'd really like to be able to sync my address book with my hotmail online contacts. I think it's a shame that you can't use address book to tidy up contacts and then import it into hotmail (I know that's a hotmail issue, not a mail problem).

I've downloaded Thunderbird to try as a comparison but given that I don't think that I can use it with Hotmail, it's going to be of limited use to me.

 

[balamw]

I've been using webmail more and more (gmail in particular) to gain platform/machine independence.

However I recently had a need for "direct" access to my work Exchange server via IMAP (OWA doesn't allow for real HTML formatted responses). So I fired up Mail, and as immediately fed up with its desire to synchronize all of the Public Folders on the system ahead of my (*^&^ Inbox.

Anyhow I downloaded T-bird, which seems to have much more customizable IMAP support, and is thus far better for my rare needs of a local e-mail client. I already use T-bird on my PC and on various Linux boxes so it helps that I am already familiar with its UI.

B

 

[fjs08]

>>I've been using webmail more and more (gmail in particular) to gain platform/machine independence.<<

You do have a point here. I always take my notebook with me, so for me it's no problem, but my wife loves her webmail since she doesn't take her computer with her on trips. I've tried them all. I hear Yahoo is coming out with a new, Entourage/Outlook style appearance. I haven't seen it, and I'm not on their beta testing plan.

One problem I do have is that depending on where I am, some programs don't seem to work. For instance, at Panera Bakeshops, I can send my .mac mail from Mail, but not from Entourage.

But so far, none of the webmail programs are as elegant as Mail or Entourge, imo.

Frank

 

[bousozoku]

>>I've been using webmail more and more (gmail in particular) to gain platform/machine independence.<<

You do have a point here. I always take my notebook with me, so for me it's no problem, but my wife loves her webmail since she doesn't take her computer with her on trips. I've tried them all. I hear Yahoo is coming out with a new, Entourage/Outlook style appearance. I haven't seen it, and I'm not on their beta testing plan.

One problem I do have is that depending on where I am, some programs don't seem to work. For instance, at Panera Bakeshops, I can send my .mac mail from Mail, but not from Entourage.

But so far, none of the webmail programs are as elegant as Mail or Entourge, imo.

Frank

At least, with google mail, you can use it with the POP3 protocol so you don't have to sacrifice style or efficiency or storage.

 

[bigboy99]

I used Thunderbird on my Dell, but now use Mail exclusively. I tried importing all my T-Bird settings when I switched platforms, but it was not worth the effort. Mail handled the import of everything - folders, addresses, old mail - flawlessly the first time. Plus, it's nicely integrated with the address book and iCal.

Entourage is a joke, like a shareware version of Outlook. Maybe someday there will be full versions of the Windows Office suite available for Mac, or better yet, Mac only options. Until then the Mac OSX stuff is good enough for most email, scheduling, addresses.

BB99

 

[benh]

I'd like a mail client that doesn't suck with large mail spools.

I have well over 500,000 messages comprising 1.6+GB of mail in 70+ local folders. I'm currently using Eudora Pro 3.0.x from the 1990s that only runs in Classic, because it just plain works. I use the filters extensively to manage my mail, and filtering is a necessity. I generally pop all my mail to my local machine and keep it there.

I've tried migrating to other more modern mail clients and have always gone back to Eudora Pro 3.0.x because every other mail client I've tried barfs on this quantity of mail. I don't want to archive older mail. I don't particularly care for anything but plaintext email.

I'd prefer an app that stores everything in mbox format, so I can munge the files directly if necessary. Barring that, I need an easy way to export everything as mbox format.

I like Apple Mail's smart mailbox feature but Apple's Mail app grinds and grinds almost to a halt and is constantly reindexing or rebuilding various folders, rendering them unusable until the reindexing is done.

I tried MailSmith, and it seems to have issues similar to Apple's Mail in that it spins forever when operating on a larger (300 meg+, 30k messages) mailbox.

Thunderbird is what I'm trying next.

Any recommendations for a mail client that can handle very large amounts of mail, does filtering, does SSL and either stores in mbox format or can easily import/export mbox format files?

 

[MisterMe]

I'd like a mail client that doesn't suck with large mail spools.

I have well over 500,000 messages comprising 1.6+GB of mail in 70+ local folders. I'm currently using Eudora Pro 3.0.x from the 1990s that only runs in Classic, because it just plain works....

Why do you believe that Eudora Pro 3.0.x in Classic works better than Eudora Pro 6.2.3 in MacOS X?

 

[benh]

I tried Eudora Pro 6.x and it choked on the large amount of mail as well. Perhaps the most recent version is better. I'll have to check.

 

[AlBDamned]

I tried Eudora Pro 6.x and it choked on the large amount of mail as well. Perhaps the most recent version is better. I'll have to check.

What do you do that requires access to 500,000 emails? Is that some kind of knowledge bank for loads of other people too or what?

 

[FoxyKaye]

benh has the right of it. New versions of Eudora don't manage large quantities of mail well at all - but then again, neither do Entourage or Mail.app. All three of these have caused folks at our organization extensive grief managing large quantities of mail. We've been slowly migrating over to Thunderbird - here's the pros and cons as I see them:

* Eudora: mangles HTML mail both sending and receiving, chokes on large quantities of mail, prone to crashiness, doesn't use standard MBX format. One pro for Eudora is that it does have very good filtering and sorting, better than many clients.

* Entourage: a nightmare all around. Can't handle large quantities of mail, crashes inexplicibly, tends to corrupt mailbox files, completely proprietary mailbox format (meaning moving mail to other clients is even more of a PITA then Eudora or Mail.app combined). I can't think of a single good thing to say about Entourage.

* Mail.app: Never had any problems with it other than it tends to choke on large quantities of mail. Handles HTML mail very well, has nice interface, and is in general easy to use. However, it also doesn't store mail in standard MBX format, and isn't as keen at managing multiple email accounts as Eudora.

* Thunderbird: Less robust than either Mail.app or Eudora - they're still working the kinks out, though 1.5 is supposed to be its real debut. However, does store mail in standard MBX file types, handles HTML beautifully, and is getting better at handling multiple email addresses. Thunderbird also has a killer junk mail filter - rivaling that of Mail.app, and much better than Eudora or Entourage.

 

[bousozoku]

What do you do that requires access to 500,000 emails? Is that some kind of knowledge bank for loads of other people too or what?

I was keeping all of my important e-mails since 1996 in Claris em@iler and then, Eudora until Eudora 5.x didn't agree with Panther and decided to re-index the whole thing so that I saw mostly deleted mail instead of what I still needed.

I had a lot of technical bits and pieces as well as business information, but since it was mostly mangled, I ended up moving to the Mozilla browser suite and later to Thunderbird 0.5. I've now got a bit of e-mail stored but obviously not 7 years' worth and Thunderbird 1.5 release candidate works quite well with it--much better than the production 1.0.7 and worlds better than Eudora ever did.

 

[benh]

Yep, like the previous poster, I have all my email (sent and received) back to about 1993 and I want to hang onto it in my primary use mail application.

Thus my need for an app that'll handle that kind of volume.

 

[benh]

Just as a followup, it looks like Thunderbird is doing a pretty good job handling all my mail. It was able to import everything without issue, and seems to be working just fine.

All kinds of UI bugs in Thunderbird, though.

 

[javiercr]

gmail is best

 

[FoxyKaye]

All kinds of UI bugs in Thunderbird, though.

Ayup - Thunderbird has done some weird stuff with me, too. Beachballing (or as I call it, the spinning rainbow pizza of death), not responding for like 30 seconds and then everything is fine, the occasional error transferring mail to different folders. I'm chalking it up to being an early adopter - the 1.1 - 2.1 versions of Eudora were also not the best either.

Hang tight, though, since the Mozilla Web site seems to indicate that the GM 1.5 version will be arriving by the end of this month.

 

[old john]

I've been using Eudora since 1996 and have all my old email messages (in various mailboxes) since then. One reason I didn't even try Entourage (although I use other Office Apps), was because I assumed that, with Entourage, Windows viruses might be able to use the address book and send themselves to addresses they found there, in the way they seem to with Outlook. Although as a Mac user I'm not vulnerable to Windows viruses, I didn't want to send them to other people. I've no idea if this is correct, because I know very little about Windows and am not very techie.

I am still using OS 9 on an iMac DV+, but my new iMac G5 has just arrived, so this thread has been very useful -- thanks. If I understand bousozoku and benh correctly, Mail.app won't be able to handle all my large number of old email messages (though mostly they are not individually very large). Can Mail.app import mail files from Eurdora anyway? Maybe I need to use get Eudora for OS X in order to be able to access my old emails and then I can use Mail.app for new ones. We use several "Personalites" in Eudora (for example, my POP3 ISP is different from my SMTP ISP with different user IDs and when broadband is down and I have to use a dial-up account with a different SMTP server) – is there an equivalent in Mail.app?

With the experience many contributors to this thread clearly have, I'm hoping for some answers to my questions and any other advice, please. …next, before moving all my files to the G5, I need to figure how I get my document files recognized by their equivalent OS X apps, when I they don't have name extensions, such as .doc ....so off to hunt for a suitable forum!

 

[ahunter3]

Thunderbird vs Mail vs Entourage.

None of the above. Strictly Eudora for me.

I see a few other folks have brought up Eudora. One person complained that Eudora doesn't do a good job rendering HTML emails. That would not bother me, insofar as HTML email is, by definition, spam. Any email addressed to me with HTML formatting goes straight into the trash, unseen and unread.

Compared to Eudora, the above-mentioned three apps are kids' toys, with lousy filtering and poor/slow search capabilities.

 

[jywv8]

I used Entourage extensively on OS 9 and the early days of OS X. But every so often, my mail database or whatever it was called would get corrupted. So I switched to Mail, which I like very much. I do miss having "stationary", though.

 

[bousozoku]

None of the above. Strictly Eudora for me.

I see a few other folks have brought up Eudora. One person complained that Eudora doesn't do a good job rendering HTML emails. That would not bother me, insofar as HTML email is, by definition, spam. Any email addressed to me with HTML formatting goes straight into the trash, unseen and unread.

Compared to Eudora, the above-mentioned three apps are kids' toys, with lousy filtering and poor/slow search capabilities.

By your definition, HTML e-mails are spam. I tried to use Eudora up through version 6 and it was nearly unusable for me.

If Thunderbird is a toy, Eudora is a broken toy that hypes a lot but can't do the job and destroys your other toys while it's working.

 

[Malfoy]

So much information.. so...

Maill chokes on large mail (i don't have that much mail coming thru at one time)
Eudora is Eudora
Entourage is Outlook (which means its filter needs a lot of work)
Tbird - unless it's changed its filter since 1.0, was worse than outlook

The big question I have is, which handles multiple addresses, both imap and pop3, the best? I have like 6 or 7 email addys and want them all to come into their seperate folder(W/O rules!). That's one thing that pissed me off about switching back to Outlook from Tbird(Tbirds god awful filter drove me away). Outlook refused to accept having multiple emails having multiple inboxes for various pop3s and making those extensive rules JUST for that got old very fast while Tbird did it quite well out the box.

I plan to get my mac in the next 2 weeks and once I'm setup, I need to install a mail app pronto.