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iMac the Gold Standard of PCs

We’ve been testing this new iMac, and our verdict is that it’s the gold standard of desktop PCs. To put it simply: No desktop offered by Dell or Hewlett-Packard or Sony or Gateway can match the new iMac G5’s combination of power, elegance, simplicity, ease of use, built-in software, stability and security. From setup to performing the most intense tasks, it’s a pleasure to use. And, contrary to common misconceptions, this Mac is competitively priced, when compared with comparably equipped midrange Windows PCs; and it handles all common Windows files, as well as the Internet and email, with aplomb.

WSJ.com

I know Walt Mossberg is a Mac fan, but the above slice from his latest piece really says quite a bit.

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Moving Mail from Outlook to Entourage – (or any Mac email program)

I am currently in the process of moving to a Mac at work (yes!) and my main concern in the switch was moving all my email from Outlook.  If you don’t know already (though you might expect) Outlook uses a proprietary format called .PST.  There is no obvious way to just migrate the messages and your folders to another system… at least on the surface.  Turns out there are actually a few ways, but by far the easiest was this simple guide at Riches Communications.

The basics are as follows…

  • Install Mozilla (Full version with email) or Thunderbird on your PC.
  • Import Mail from Outlook (Tools / Import)
  • On my machine this took about 30 minutes.  I have a few GB of email with plenty of attachments included courtesy of a boatload of work projects.
  • From here, I would really recommend you read the article as the visuals are probably simpler to understand than my description, but basically you just rename each folder with an extension of .mbox.
    • Mozilla uses the standard .mbox format which can then easily be imported into the email program of your choice.  I actually have to use Entourage, though this absolutely works in Mail.app and certainly Thunderbird (which probably does not require the renaming).  Entourage incidentally uses a proprietary message store as well, but can at least handle the standards on import.
  • All you need to do with your renamed folders is drag them to Entourage which asks if you want to import (yes) and brings the mail to the local folders. 

    • As I mentioned I had a lot of mail so this took a while as you have to repeat the import loop for each folder and you can only import one at a time.  Other than time and the manual nature of this process it’s actually quite painless and totally works.  I imported all my mail to my personal PowerBook at home and burned the mail database to a DVD so I can easily import it today on my new machine at the office.

    I think it’s interesting to note that you can’t actually import your mail (with all your folders) into Outlook Express!  It will import some of your mail – actually just the inbox which leaves you hanging since most people do not maintain all their mail in a single folder.

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