Microsoft Entourage

If you've seen the desktop picture I posted, you'll notice that I use Microsoft Entourage to manage my email. "But Jeff, you ardent Microsoft-basher, how could you stoop so low as to use Entourage when Apple gives you Mail for free with Mac OS X?"

Simply put, Apple's Mail program is a stinky piece of shit.

However, I am a small bit biased, as my first experience was on Mac OS X 10.0 -- with very poor results. As an initial trial, I let it pull down my inbox from Yahoo Mail (yes, I once used Yahoo Mail exclusively to manage all my mail accounts, back when free email was truly free) and it crashed after about 1000 messages. This was not a good sign.

Apple Mail continues to feel more like a crappy toy than a real email program, and as much as I hate to say it, Entourage gives me the options and stability I crave. Simple example: what options do I have for telling Mail or Entourage when to check my mail? Here's Mail's option(s):

Manually

Every minute
Every 5 minutes
Every 15 minutes
Every 30 minutes
Every hour

Very limited. But with Entourage, I get many more options:

Here, I can tell it exactly which accounts to check, and at what intervals to check them. I can even have it check my mail at specific times! In addition, I can have as many mail-checking schedules as I want, checking any combination of my mail accounts on any combination of time intervals. (Of course, there's always the big "Send & Receive All" button in case I want to forget the schedule and check right now.)

In addition, Microsoft makes it so easy to back up your email and preferences, that it's a shame I don't do it more often. All you have to do is drag the "Microsoft User Data" folder from your Documents folder onto another drive; to restore a backup, just drag that folder back into your Documents folder and Entourage is back at the state you left it. So easy!

There's more I can say, but it will have to wait until I'm finished with my math project.