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What Mac Mail solution do you use?
Judith, as TUAW-reading faithfuls know, likes to ask me to ask you all questions whenever she is considering what the best option is for her own personal Mac usage. Here's one such question: What Mac Mail solution do you use and why?I, personally, use Mail.app to handle all of my 6 or so email addresses, and I have an obscene level of folders, and now thanks to Tiger, smart folders set up to file everything I receive automatically. I do not, however, use Mail.app's built-in spam-filtering options, because they didn't work back in Panther when I first started using Mail.app on a regular basis, and I've become accustomed to using Spam Sieve (which happens to work very nicely).
Any staunch Entourage users out there? Gmail hackers? Please, share your email war-stories with us in the comments below.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Rob said 4:19PM on 6-16-2005
Thunderbird.
Standard mbox format is especially nice.
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random said 4:19PM on 6-16-2005
I use Mail. It works for me. Even though it's not feature rich and the junk mail filtering leaves something to be desired, it does the job. And works with my other apps seamlessly.
If you're a novice user with multiple accounts, you better take the time to learn how to create rules to filter and sort your mail.
Entourage is essentially Microsoft Outlook Express with maybe one or two new features for Mac OS X. Do you really, really want to trust your mail to anything derived from Outlook?
I can't comment on other apps. I gave up on Eudora a long time ago. Thunderbird works great for my mom on a PC; I'd assume it's pretty much the same program for a Mac.
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Paul said 4:19PM on 6-16-2005
Mail2 i <3 bounce feature.
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Christof Zachl said 1:41AM on 12-07-2006
We use Thunderbird since Mail.app and also Entourage lost mails and it works on several IMAP boxes for several people in the studio.
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djones said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
"Entourage is essentially Microsoft Outlook Express with maybe one or two new features for Mac OS X. Do you really, really want to trust your mail to anything derived from Outlook?"
Actually, you couldn't be more wrong. Entourage shares almost nothing in common with Outlook Express, and Microsoft Outlook (from Office) users dream about the features, integration, and usefulness of Entourage.
I used Entourage exclusively until Mail.app's life in Panther, and I've been using it ever since.
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narco said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
I've tried many different email apps because I deal with an insane amount of emails and roughly 20 different email accounts. After everything, I decided to stick with Mail.app. It works beautifully, and the smart folders make my job a lot easier.
But make sure it's Mail for TIGER, and not Panther (or any version before). I almost gave up on the regular Mail app because it always crashed. The worst part is when I reopened the app, all the emails I sorted would re-appear in the inbox, and ALSO at the location I sorted those emails to. It was a total mess, especially when dealing with 15MB attachments!
Luckily the Tiger version was re-worked and is absolutely wonderful. Now if only I can use Safari longer than 15 minutes before crashing!
Fishes,
narco.
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Shane Todd said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
I was using Entourage until about a month ago. I switched to mail.app so that I could use Spotlight to search my email. I don't throw out personal correspondence, so I have approximately 5000 emails going back for the last several years.
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Scott McNulty said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
I, as an Apple Pundit, use Entourage for two of my accounts. One of them is an exchange account, so that is an obvious choice. Sure, the Exchange support in Entourage is laughable but it is better than that of Mail.app (and that MacBU person said yesterday that MS is focusing on more Exchange support on Macs, so I am excited about that).
I tried Mail in Pather and it just didn't do anything for me, and I hate the way it looks in Tiger (though that isn't a very good reason not to use it).
With all that said I spend most of my time in Safari checkin' my gmail account.
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jon said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
i use tiger's mail.app with the HTTPMail plug-in for hotmail, love having 5 email accounts in the same place - and being able to find everything quickly
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miguel madeira said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
thunderbird.
dual boot powerbook, panther and ubuntu linux. thunderbird works and looks the same way on both.
i use gmail for most of my mail and thunderbird to collect all the other accounts (work email, .mac, isp and my own server mail).
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Tom Bridge said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
The few, the proud, the Mailsmith users.
Yeah, I've been using Mailsmith since version 1, although, there were a few years that I went back to Entourage (~2001), but I'm a Mailsmithy, for good or for bad.
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Talie said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
I also use Thunderbird, very fast and user friendly.
I switched to Mac back in August and was already using Thunderbird on my PC...
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Mary-Ann said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
I use Entourage, mainly because I like having my calendar, address book and project stuff all in one app. Mail.app was OK for, well, mail and I might give it a try when I get Tiger.
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Jeremy Flint said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
I use Thunderbird as well. I was also a PC user (Dell Laptop) and just decided to stick with T-bird when I got my Powerbook.
I also use Gmail, and use Gmail Status to alert me when I have new e-mail and just check it using Firefox. I don't download it to my Thunderbird app or anything.
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Todd Plants said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
Also on Mail.app. Never any problems. I think it handles multiple accounts really well.
The spam filtering works OK for me. One weird thing is that it sometimes tags messages as spam w/o moving them to the spam folder. Weird.
One thing I'd like to find is a good calendaring program that I can do some online hosting with...
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Brian said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
Given that my work user an exchange server, I will sing praises to one of the most under-appreciated features in tiger--exchange support in Mail.
I also have mail checking my gmail and .mac accounts.
For simple mail stuff, and finding that 'one email I sent you about that one account a few weeks ago', mail works great!
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Joshua said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
Because both my wife and I work in offices that use exclusively PCs with no Exchange server, we use G-Mail, and only G-Mail. Plus, G-Mail has the best (simple, intuitive, and out of the way) interface of any online or offline mail application or service.
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David said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
I don't use Entourage but I'd like to point out that Entourage was built from the ground up and the lead programmer also brought us Claris Mail, the email client that I still measure all others by.
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Harsh said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
I use Mail.app on Tiger for it's ridiculously cool iPhoto integration, photo slideshow feature, and smart mail folders.
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KissTheRing said 4:20PM on 6-16-2005
i've used several pop clients to check my gmail account but none seem to work as well with it as Mail. I've only had this setup in Tiger before that I was using Thunderbird and it acted a bit quirky with the gmail.
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