How I can switch to a Mac for work: Part 1 - Email
=======How I can switch to a Mac for work: Part 1 - Email
>>>>>>> .r7754After my last article: Why I cant switch to a Mac, there were a lot of great responses. As a disclaimer, I wrote it in frustration, but I was not looking to bitch, I was looking for some answers. The biggest frustration I had was with email. After reading through your responses, I had a couple of new solutions to try to solve my email dilemma: Mozilla Thunderbird and Novell Evolution.
Novell Evolution
Novell Evolution, originally Ximian Evolution is the fullest featured email / calendaring app in the linux / unix world. It is currently at version 2 and is a testament to the strength of the open source model. Recently, Novell released to the open source community, the Ximian Connector - the plugin for Evolution that allows the most complete operability with Exchange servers outside of Microsoft Outlook. Evolution can work on Mac OS X also, but it is not a native app and must be compiled and use elements in the Gnome Tool Kit. The Mac port also lags behind in its version. Fink lists it at 1.4.6 as of this writing and the Ximian Connector has not been ported to Mac yet.
Hopefully Apple is working to include the Ximian Connector or elements of it in future versions of Mail / iCal and Address Book. It would be a shame not to!
Mozilla Thunderbird
Now, with Mozilla Thunderbird, do I have a solution? Lets take a look. I downloaded the latest release of thunderbird and fired it up. I put in all my information and it started catching up on about 300 mb of messages. Thunderbird was noticably faster at downloading messages than both Apple Mail and Microsoft Entourage 2003. One of the complaints I had with all previous mail clients I had tried on the Mac is the lack of fully functional HTML. A lot of users had a great deal of criticism about my need for HTML. I agree. HTML is a waste for simple text messages which is the majority of normal communication over email. However, I would much rather have a full-featured HTML option rather than just the basics. Tables help with formatting, especially when you are sending multiple lines of similar data. Now I am happy with the email sending, receiving and formatting. What about addresses. One of the weaknesses with Thunderbird is the inability to connect to the built in Address book. Not a big deal. Thunderbird was not designed to integrate in with the native address book on each system. I have not yet figured out a good way to synchronize my contacts to the Mac. Once I do that, Thunderbird will be a pretty great email solution for any platform.
What works:
- Fastest IMAP support I have seen on the Mac (nice job Mozilla!)
- Nice interface and easy to use
What Doesnt:
- No built in address import from Exchange server - limited ability to import other address book typess
- Not integrated well into the OS (but it works on all platforms!)
- Cannot synchronize with a palm/blackberry on the mac (yet)
Where to go from here
Mozilla Thunderbird fills my needs pretty well. My colleagues and I share an address book that is in an outlook public folder. If I were able to synchronize this or use LDAP to access it (dont think you can with public folders, only the global address list), then I would be well on my way to replacing my Windows PC. I am looking forward to companies integrating the Ximian Connector into their software, or others porting Evolution to Cocoa. I think the future is bright. Look out for the next installment of my trials switching to the Mac.