Looking for a powerful email client?

Hi all,

I have read, over the past year or more, the various Mac forums and threads to get ready to make the jump; and as that day grows closer I have a few last minute questions that I kindly need your help.

One of these is, finding a good and powerful email client to replace MS Outlook. I am not thinking of getting the current, existing, MS Office for Mac and may not even think of the next release either.

So, what is there out there which I can use instead of this (not Outlook Express). I don't mind if such an application isn't freeware, but of course freeware are always great.

Thanks for any feedback and help.

 

Any specific features you need from Outlook? If its pretty specific, most likely only Microsoft Entouage will suffice.

You can try Mozilla Thunderbird. Not sure if its powerful enough for you, but try it out anyways.

 

Sam,

Thank you for the reply. I've had a look at Thunderbird and I don't think it has all the features that I need. With moving to Apple / Mac, I was hoping that I can put behind me the days of MS applications, but if Entourage is the only option then so be it; I will give this a look.

Thank you again.

 

Sam,

Do you know if there anyway to buy Entourage without buying the whole MS Office suite? I sure don't want to fork out that amount of money for so many applications that I don't plan to use. Does MS offer Entourage as a stand-alone application?

 

Unfortunately, I can't see anywhere that says you can purchase Entourage separately...How to Buy only leads you to getting the entire Office 2004 suite.

 

The OP can buy MS Office Student/Teacher edition $125.00 U.S from Amazon with no tax and free shipping. Still not sure if it's worth buying at this point when the new version will be released in January. I would just use Apple's built-in email client for now. It will be really awesome in Leopard next month.

 

Again, thank you both for the feedback and help.

I have a chance to buy MS Office 2004 for the Mac for US$225 for 3 users. I was thinking of getting this, and then just upgrade to the newer version whenever it is made available. Afterall, MS are known to delay the launch of their products. Mind you, I am not all too keen on getting anything from MS anymore and was hoping to find something of strength without the need to resort to MS.

Sam, my main needs is to be able to run the huge number of rules I have in Outlook, and the ability to sync. with my iPaq PDA.

I still have a few days to decide on the MS Office offer, so I will study this a bit more. Meanwhile if you have any pointers, please feel free to help out .. it is ever so much appreciated.

 

you might want to wait until after office 08 is released, that way you have a shot to find 04 really cheap somewhere (used).

 

hldan makes some very good points.

Have you tried Mail.app?

There is also iCal for all of your calendaring needs.

Address Book to store your contact information.

iSync should work with your PDA too.

Entourage 2004 integrates all these applications and is generally more robust, but you should first see if Mac OS X is able to satisfy your needs before spending ca$h on Micro$oft. Also, remember that Office 2004 runs under Rosetta and is consequently a bit slower than it's Windows counterpart. And you've already expressed a desire to not use Micro$oft anymore; Mail.app is one alternative to consider and you should already have installed on your Mac. If you must use Entourage, wait for the next version (2008).

 

wail, i found this just a while ago thought you might find it useful: http://www.emailman.com/mac/clients.html

 

I’m speechless, thank you all, so much for all the links and feedback. This may seem like a silly question, but as I’ve yet to get my hands on a Mac I am a bit in the dark. These applications, iSync, iCal, Address Book, and Mail .. do these come packaged with all MacBook / MacBook Pro?

As I’ve said earlier, I am not keen at all to get my hands on any MS products anymore and if these are already bundled then I may as well wait to see how they fair before I start grumbling.

Thanks again for all the kind feedback.

 

smiley_lauf,

What a wonderful site you’ve linked me to, thank you. I have had a look at that and it is very comprehensive indeed. At the bottom of the site, the 2nd last link (Mac Utilities) seems to have all that I really need.

I will wait until I am fully migrated to Mac, try out the built-in applications and then start to add one needed utility at a time.

This is fabulous, I can’t wait to start playing

 

Wail, all of those programs you listed come preloaded on mac, so you should be fine.
And if you reinstall osx, they come with the installer as well.

 

This is looking better all the time, glad to hear that .. thank you sulkorp.

 

Be careful buying the Student Edition of Office 08, I believe MS is no longer including Entourage. I am pretty sure they are already doing this on the Windows side with Outlook and I would assume they would keep the same policy on the Mac side.

You may also want to look into just going web based. After being frustrated by Mail.app and Thunderbird I decided to ditch desktop clients all together and just use the Gmail web interface with Google Notifier on the desktop.

 

Thanks for the heads'-up on these two issues. I can't really do the web based since I need my emails a lot of the time when, and where, I am not on-line.

Would you think MS offer Entourage, should I need it as a last resort, as a stand alone? If that's the case then that may be a good thing since I am not too keen to get the whole MS Office package. I do not plan, need, all of the powerful Office components and am more than happy with NeoOffice (for now at least).

 

Wail, you are welcome. Just to punt OS X, note that it is based in BSD Unix, so comes with all the 'goodies' *nix brings with it. That's what is attracting me to this OS.

EDIT: Also see this new hybrid client (mozilla-based)