Almost 10 years ago, I used to use Connectix‘s Virtual PC with Windows 98 to send a message with a PDF attachment to my dissertation adviser on my iMac 333 MHz. For many years, I used Mac version of Outlook and Mac-only Entourage. Nowadays, I use Apple‘s Mail more often than Entourage. As a matter of fact, I didn’t use Mail probably till 14 months ago. Oh, wait… Several years ago, I used it for a very short time. It was a horrible e-mail application. It consistently failed to send out messages. And Windows users couldn’t open my attachments. Inevitably, I had to use Microsoft Entourage.

Then comes the following question: Is Apple’s Mail still inferior to Microsoft’s Entourage? Let me ask another question. Are there any unique functions on Entourage that Apple’s Mail doesn’t have?

I had three reasons why I had to use Entourage to check and send e-mail messages. No. 1, Mail didn’t support a global search function. I sometimes wanted to find a particular old message with a key phrase. Mail didn’t let me. And Entourage did. No. 2, I sometimes had to send a message with an attachment to a PC user. PC users couldn’t open Mac attachments sent from Mail. No. 3, I had a couple of Hotmail accounts. And Entourage accesses POP as well as Hotmail accounts.   Continue reading →