BIG GEEKOUT ALERT:
(Skip if you are not so inclined)
I am exploring switching from Microsoft Office 2004's Entourage to Mac OS X Tiger's iApp suite of Mail/iCal/Address Book. A number of factors have led to this exploration, in order of severity:
—An increasing number of unfixed (1 year +) and difficult to work around bugs in Entourage's calendaring, which makes the simple act of scheduling events with JM difficult.
—Three different instances where Entourage database corruption caused data loss; one of these failures actually wiped out a few months worth of mail.
—On a related note, I *hate* the gigantic Entourage database file, which I have to keep pruning and compacting by hand to keep it from growing enormous
—Architectural issues: Entourage is an enormous app, and I use the email, some of the Address Book, can't really use the calendar (as detailed above) and none of the other features. I haven't adopted the Project Center, which looks great but I haven't messed with to any effect.
What concerns me is that I have seven years of Entourage/Outlook Express experience built up, down to my speed at key combos, which will be hard to retrain for...but since I have a .mac address I could use iCal's scheduling to make things work much, much more easily with JM, and with my phone's Bluetooth via iSync, etc.
For those who know what I'm talking about, please feel free to chime in with opinions.
6:54 PM
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