After considering what I had written this morning I have decided to once again give Entourage a good go. It seems it really does what I need and does it well. I can do multiple accounts, handle complex filters and schedules as well as working nicely with Applescript. I can also add or modify full contact info for people and sync that directly in my Palm. Since I acquired my Tungsten C, I have once again, become a robust Palm user and want to have as much ready to access from my handheld. It is fantastic to have docs (office) and email (with full contacts) ready to rock while walking around the office, or traveling about either locally or pretty much anywhere there is a wifi Access Point…
The main bummer I found last time I tried this was Entourage’s lack of integration with POPFile, a really great spam filter. For some reason, Entourage cannot handle the extra header info I prefer to use (vs. subject modification) in order to activate filters for spam and lists.
Instead I am using SpamSieve, which runs quietly and works in conjunction with Entourage. Unlike SpamFire, it does not pre-check mail, but rather reads the mail as it comes through and works it’s bayesian magic. You definitely have to train it to get things going, but that is not a problem as you can select hundreds of messages at once and say they are good or spam. After about 600, the stats are pretty reliable. Like all filters, you can tweak it as you go and the applescript used can easily be triggered with keyboard shortcuts.
When I first stated using OSX, I naturally migrated to Apple Mail. I found it had some issues in the 10.0 release and switched back to Entourage. Sometime after 10.1 I went back to Mail and was quite happy until the app I felt I was pushing it too much and discovered PowerMail. While I really like PM, it has become a pain to manage contacts within email and a second application. Yes you can sync, but that really does not work that well and only offers email address, not full contact management. While Now Contact is a great contact manager, it does not do email. Entourage has it all and the whole thing (all four core apps in fact) syncs to Palm. Of course I have known that all along, but have steered clear for some reason. I’m back…
I came to the same conclusion. Only thing I don’t like is the contacts in Entourage. I have a lot of contacts and much prefer Now Contact or even Palm Desktop.
Clincher is new version of Entourage coming this summer which will fully support MS Exchange servers and which I need at work.
Regarding mail headers, you can filter mail headers using Entourage’s ‘Custom View’ feature. It’s bizarre that this feature is not available under mail rules since the interface for custom view is identical otherwise.