[X4U] E-Mail programs (Was: Users' judgments of the glossy screen?)

[Randy B. Singer]

On Feb 27, 2008, at 3:45 AM, Tim Collier wrote:

> I know that Mr. Singer might be surprised at by answer to this post,

I'm not.  Why would I be?

> but,
> since Office 2008 came out and OF COURSE I bought it, I have to say  
> that
> Entourage does an excellent job of handling email.  It even has  
> some pretty
> good junk mail filters built right in and saves me a lot of time  
> not having
> to read crap.
...
>
> So, confused about what mail application to use?  Entourage 2008 is  
> the
> CLEAR answer.

With Eudora being discontinued by Qualcomm, Entourage is left at the  
top of the heap as the most advanced e-mail program for the  
Macintosh.  Nothing else for the Mac has as many features for the  
power-user.  However, even though I'm told that there have been some  
substantial advances in terms of reliability for Entourage, it still  
has one glaring, HUGE weakness, and that is that it keeps all of your  
archived mail in one monolithic database.  If that database becomes  
corrupted (as has been known to happen all too frequently), and it  
cannot be rebuilt, you are SOL.  Once can work-around this by keeping  
backups of one's database, but many folks prefer the security of  
using a program like Mail, which keeps separate e-mail messages in  
separate Finder-readable files.

___________________________________________
Randy B. Singer
Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)

Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html
___________________________________________