[X-Newbies] Mail defaults [u]

[Steven Rogers]

On Dec 18, 2005, at 3:24 AM, Tony Johansen wrote:

> On 18/12/2005 6:56 PM, "David Flory [c]" <daflory at speakeasy.net>  
> wrote:
>
>> On Dec 17, 2005, at 11:43 PM, Scott wrote:
>>
>>>> The limitations of Apple's Mail program are getting to me and I
>>>> want to move
>>>> all my e-mail accounts over to Entourage.
>>
>> Just curious, what are your needs that are not able to be met with  
>> Mail?
>
> Dave,
> Where do I start?
>
> How about the annoying habit of going 'off-line' after a very short  
> time.

Mine only does that when my internet connection is down, or the  
server isn't responding.

> Then it seems to enjoy not wanting to use 'the specified server'  
> and wanting me to select another to send an e-mail.

Mine only does that when my ISP's SMTP server is down. If you have  
gMail, you can use that as a secondary.

> Or, periodically, pop-up windows requiring the password for various  
> accounts inexplicably

That's purely a problem with the mail host. My ISP used to have  
terrible problems with that, rumored to have been caused by an  
internal server that was supposed to be used only for testing, and an  
improperly configured load balancer. In short, that is not a problem  
with Mail.

It sounds like your ISP and/or mail service provider have some  
reliability issues.

> The inbox window seems to be made of several tiles which tend to  
> overlap here and there when there are more than 250 messages in there

I'm not sure what you're describing there - perhaps the columns in  
the header window (which could be the inbox, or the Junk or Trash, or  
whatever mailbox you're viewing. Sometimes long subjects can be  
"overlapped" by the attachments column. You can adjust all that by  
changing the column sizes and the size of the whole window.

> Most recent messages are not located together.

They are if you click on the "Date" header to sort by date.

> Full e-mail addresses are not immediately visible.

Unless the person is in your address book, then it is visible. For  
example, I'm seeing your full email address right now.  Maybe by  
"immediately", you mean that it uses the text alias rather than email  
address in the header view. That seems reasonable to me.

> Can't easily categorise mail within a mailbox.

You've got me there. A mailbox is a category, as far as mail is  
concerned. If there's anything distinguishing about your category, it  
is pretty easy to isolate with the search - or you could even create  
a smart mailbox for it.

> I have no problems remotely like any of these in Entourage, which  
> indicates it is the program at fault. I have 1500 messages in  
> Entourage currently. Mail seems to be fine for one or two e-mail  
> addresses and small numbers of messages, but deficient for heavy  
> usage.

I have more message than than in just my weekly rolling Junk folder.  
I have 11 email addresses, but I recently cut down and got rid of  
most of the seldom used ones. There's nothing about mail that  
prevents using it for large volumes of mail. 1500 message is not a  
large volume. I have 1191 messages in my trash folder and 620 in my  
Junk folder, so counting the emails that actually need to be saved,  
I've probably received about 2000 emails this week.

People using other programs just assume I do nothing but filter mail  
all day long, but I really have little bother from that volume  
because Mail makes it easy to handle.

SR