Honest question here

[miscellaneousmedia]

I'm not bashing MSFT or Macs, but here is my quandry. I've been using
Outlook for years and find it to be the only indepensible MSFT program.
I like iCal ok and I even like Entourage somewhat. But what I seek is
one page where I can see tasks, contacts and mail, and link to contacts
and other folders, as in Outlook Today. I also seek an easy synch onto
the web or a cell phone. And I would like to be able to send
appontments and stuff to Outlook users and vice sersa and have them go
fairly seemlessly into my Outlook for Mac or whatever you would call
it. There are lots of other little things I would like, but those are
my two biggies. Given this, should I just give up and stick with
Outlook? I would actually pay up to a few hundred dollars if someone
would just create Outlook for Mac and make it just as indentical to
Outlook as Word for Mac and Excel for Mac are to the PC versions.
Please! Somebody do this!

 

[Barry Wainwright [MVP]]

I'm not bashing MSFT or Macs, but here is my quandry. I've been using
Outlook for years and find it to be the only indepensible MSFT program.
I like iCal ok and I even like Entourage somewhat. But what I seek is
one page where I can see tasks, contacts and mail, and link to contacts
and other folders, as in Outlook Today. I also seek an easy synch onto
the web or a cell phone. And I would like to be able to send
appontments and stuff to Outlook users and vice sersa and have them go
fairly seemlessly into my Outlook for Mac or whatever you would call
it. There are lots of other little things I would like, but those are
my two biggies. Given this, should I just give up and stick with
Outlook? I would actually pay up to a few hundred dollars if someone
would just create Outlook for Mac and make it just as indentical to
Outlook as Word for Mac and Excel for Mac are to the PC versions.
Please! Somebody do this!

As you found out, Entourage is not Outlook. It lacks some of outlooks
features, but has many more unique ones.

Paul Berkowitz has written a shareware app that does much of what Outlook
Today does. It is called 'Entourage Today' and can be downloaded from his
dot mac pages at <http://homepage.mac.com/berkowit28/> or via VersionTracker
at <http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/24541>

 

[miscellaneousmedia]

Well that's great that Entourage has some bells and whistles that
Outlook doesn't. But, IMHO, if you're looking to convert the ten
billion Outlook users to Macs (but then agai, why would you be?), the
Mac developers at MSFT should focus on first giving the Outlook users
what they already have and like -- not take stuff away amd presume the
new features will appeal to them and compensate for the losses. I can
see why some people complain that MSFT isn't serious about making its
software, or at least all its software, usable on a Mac. It keeps us
tethered to MSFT. You know, I can't believe one lousy piece of software
is keeping me tethered to MSFT. I have a budget for 10 desktops this
year and one friggin piece of software is making my decision for me.
This is insane. Walt Mossberg, you listening to me!

As for Berkowitz, maybe he is on vacation, but I tried his software it
had errors in it. I emailed him; he emailed me. More errors. Still no
luck. Haven't heard from him in a couple days. I'm betting the chances
of him offering a clean and easy fix for most of my Outlook needs are
slim.

Someday maybe Google will have a solution.

 

[Barry Wainwright [MVP]]

Well that's great that Entourage has some bells and whistles that
Outlook doesn't. But, IMHO, if you're looking to convert the ten
billion Outlook users to Macs (but then agai, why would you be?), the
Mac developers at MSFT should focus on first giving the Outlook users
what they already have and like -- not take stuff away amd presume the
new features will appeal to them and compensate for the losses. I can
see why some people complain that MSFT isn't serious about making its
software, or at least all its software, usable on a Mac. It keeps us
tethered to MSFT. You know, I can't believe one lousy piece of software
is keeping me tethered to MSFT. I have a budget for 10 desktops this
year and one friggin piece of software is making my decision for me.
This is insane. Walt Mossberg, you listening to me!

You know what? I was going to ignore this message, but then I thought what
the heck, and came back to it.

Reread my message. I started by saying "Entourage is not Outlook". It is not
the same. It never was the same. It never claimed to be feature comparable.
Guess what, it doesn't create web pages like Dreamweaver either, or edit
graphics like Photoshop, or any one of a million other things that it
doesn't claim to do.

The fact is that Entourage was built from the ground up to be a mail client
& PIM for the mac. It has had more and more exchange features added to it
with each new release, I would expect that to continue, but there's no
guarantees.

If you want more features, use Safari or Firefox and Outlook Web Access.
That works well.

As for Berkowitz, maybe he is on vacation, but I tried his software it
had errors in it. I emailed him; he emailed me. More errors. Still no
luck. Haven't heard from him in a couple days. I'm betting the chances
of him offering a clean and easy fix for most of my Outlook needs are
slim.

Paul may well be on holiday. It is the holiday season, and he has a full
time job to do as well as his voluntary efforts answering questions here and
in other places. His support for his apps is generally acknowledged to be
very good. If you have emailed him with a problem I'm sure he'll get back to
you in a day or two.