MacBook Pro: One Week Report

Originally posted 2007-10-08 14:10:46

After using the MacBook Pro for a little over a week, I must confess: I miss Outlook. Admittedly, Outlook 2007 has three years on Entourage 2004, but I’m using Outlook 2003 so Entourage has a one-year advantage. My struggles:

• Meeting Requests do not display whether they conflict with existing calendar items. I have to view the calendar to check for conflicts.
• Meeting Requests do not automatically delete when I accept them.
• The Move Message dialog does not remember the last-selected folder, but always has the top folder selected.
• Out of Office messages go out for every received message, not just for the first message for a particular sender, and go out only if my Mac is running, Entourage is running, and I’m connect to Exchange. This was a fun surprise when I returned to the office and hooked my laptop back to the network and automatically sent out a slew of Out-of-Office messages.

Maybe some of these can be fixed with settings, or maybe Entourage 2008 rectifies these, but for now I stray back to my Windows laptop and Outlook. I spend my day in emails and calendar items. I’ve ordered the only Entourage book I can find, the imaginatively named Microsoft Entourage for Mac OS X, to see if it can jump-start me toward equaling or even surpassing Outlook 2003’s functionality. I’m also looking for alternative OS X Exchange client options that will give me full email and calendar functionality. Any suggestions?