Which email/calendar bundle should I use?

January 1, 2007 8:16 PM

After years of slaving to my company's email and calendaring platform (Entourage) I now find myself not with that company anymore and free to choose what to use.

I've read a lot and there seems to be a plus and minus to everything. ('Life's a trade off' a friend of mine used to say.)
I'm a MacBook Pro user with a Palm 650. Partial to Safari (vs Firefox) and have a .mac account.
I've started using GMail/Google Calendar but frankly find gmail a bit 'clunky'. Also (small) concern that they house all my info. Haven't synched Google Calendar to the Palm yet (can i do that?)
I've used Apple mail before, which I liked. Haven't used iCal much but think it looks fairly intuitive...
Not an experienced Yahoo! user so not sure I want to go there....

Sooooo, any thoughts or points of view MiFi's ? Stick with the Google bundle or shift to the Apple bundle? Or other ideas...???

posted by pman78 to computers & internet (9 comments total)

Eudora is a rock solid email program. No calendering, but iCal seems decent enough, and it will sync with .mac and most bluetooth phones...
posted by Gungho at 8:36 PM on January 1, 2007

the .mac integration is really nice if you've got more than one Mac, but otherwise, it's only good for webmail, if you're at someone else's machine. iCal is kind of the least-bad calendar app for me -- I haven't ever found one I like. Address Book & Mail are a good combo, though. I hung on to Eudora & Now Contact & Up-To-Date for a while after the OS 9-10 transition, but am glad I quit using them, finally. not sure if iSync works with the Treo, but there's an app called The Missing Sync that might do the trick, if not.
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:43 PM on January 1, 2007

I say give iCal a shot and see if it works for you; I have a feeling the integration with future Apple products is going to be interesting.
posted by trevyn at 8:49 PM on January 1, 2007

I've been using iCal, Address Book and Mail on my Mac for about a year and a half, and they work well for me; I've never felt a need to explore anything else.
posted by jeri at 9:45 PM on January 1, 2007

Gmail/Gcal is the best solution if you want to access your info from more than one computer. Your concern about them housing your info should be weighed against the benefits of having a definite backup. Gmail also gets vastly better with time: while it's not quite as good as a desktop client, it has features *nothing* else has, web or desktop -- particularly conversations.

The Palm sync thing isn't here yet, but it's coming, via an iCal sync. You can use Mail app to read and send email via Gmail too.
posted by bonaldi at 9:46 PM on January 1, 2007

Eudora is a great POP client, but is a horribly unstable IMAP client with perhaps the worst IMAP interface ever invented (no toolbar functionality, unintuitive menuing, more). It has no calendaring integration.

If you like calendaring and email to work together (like they do in Entourage) consider using Apple Mail and iCal.

Beta versions of OS X 10.5 show a lot more integration of the two (the ability to add prioritized events from an email, particularly).

Apple Mail also works nicely with the Spotlight search engine on a per-message, while Eudora does not.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:08 AM on January 2, 2007

I'm currently playing around with using Thunderbird and Lightning, a calendaring extension based on Sunbird. It's alright, seems a bit more powerful than iCal, minus the nifty Apple intergration.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:14 AM on January 2, 2007

Go with Apple. You have almost everything you need on your current computer. I have used this solution for a year and a half- no compliants. If you go over to the Apple store the folks at the Genius Bar will show you how all of it works together.

The phone is the only "problem" component but if you use Missing Sync that will be solved. Don't sign a long phone lease on the Treo. Word on the street is that Apple is going to have their own phone soon. ;)
posted by bkeene12 at 7:44 AM on January 2, 2007

Thanks all for your suggestions. Am going to give the Apple bundle a go; simplicity being the over riding objective here. Appreciate all the advice.
posted by pman78 at 8:52 PM on January 3, 2007