Tales of a Designer

Microsoft Entourage 08 for Mac

For the past few years I’ve been searching for a desktop mail app that I enjoy using. I had been used to sending/reading email in the browser with gmail, but I wanted to get away from that and use an actual application. Being on a Mac, my first move was naturally to use Mail.app, before Leopard. I thought the app was just ok, but I wasn’t really impressed.

After moving away from Mail.app, I gave Mailplane a try, but it felt too much like my web browser, and if I’m going to have a separate application for mail, I don’t want it to feel like my browser….or else I’d use my browser.

Then it was back to Mail.app with the new Leopard release. At first I really liked the ease of use and new features brought about. I thought that I had found what I was looking for. Then I realized that a few of my emails that I had sent out never got sent. That was more than frustrating, and I’m not sure if that was an error with the app, or with my mail server, but that was a deal killer.

Thunderbird was up next, and I actually didn’t have any problems with Thunderbird. Emailing wasn’t bad and it got the job done. I didn’t love Thunderbird, it was just ok, but it got done what I needed to get done and I figured I would stick with that since I felt that I was at the end of the rope with mail apps for a Mac.

Then comes the newly released Entourage 08 for Mac. Of course I was very skeptical about this product, not only because Entourage from the 04 Office suite is dreadful to use, but it’s a Microsoft product. But that is no more. For the first time I can say that I found a mail app that I love to use. The new interface is drastically different than the older version, and everything looks and feels very polished.

It is also very convenient that I can sync up my contacts and iCal with Entourage, which keeps all of my apps/devices current with my events and contacts. Since I’m expecting 2008 to be extremely busy for myself and Tridea, email will play quite a large part in communications, and I need an app that I love and feel comfortable using. That is where Entourage fills that void, and it pains me to say that I found a Microsoft product that I love using. But I would highly recommend this app for Mac users looking for a new mail app. Macworld also gave a good review on the app, which I would recommend reading if interested.