About 9 years ago, I was still a graduate student. Once day, I wrote up a brief research suggestion and PDF-printed it. Then I sent the PDF file to my dissertation professor. Several hours later, he e-mailed me back and said that he couldn’t open the attachment. I learned a lesson. So I used Virtual PC those days to send files to Windows users.

Back in 2002, Outlook Express was a nice freeware title from Microsoft. I had a couple of Hotmail accounts. And I could check my Hotmail messages on Outlook Express. But Microsoft didn’t upgrade it for Mac after Apple made a major OS change. So I switched to Entourage.

Till recently, there were a few good reasons why I never used Apple’s Mail and exclusively used Microsoft Entourage. No, 1, if I want to send files to Windows users, I could do it on Entourage by changing encoders. Another reason is that Entourage supports Hotmail accounts. So I don’t have to use a web browser to check my Hotmail messages. Another reason… Ahh, yes… Apple’s Mail was unreliable. Sometimes, messages never reached the destinations.

In November, things changed. Our hosting company made a fiasco on our account. And we weren’t getting e-mail messages on Entourage. That’s not necessarily Entourage’s fault. Anyway, we were forced to go back to Apple’s Mail. Actually, Apple’s Mail is now much better and reliable. And we have no trouble sending and receiving messages.

In January, Microsoft officially released Office 2008. Office products including Word, Excel and Entourage are pretty much mature. As for Excel, for example, Microsoft expelled once-dominant spreadsheet Lotus 1-2-3 out of the market in the late 1990s. How about Entourage? Are there new features that make Entourage 2004 users feel like switching to Entourage 2008? Continue reading →