Hi folks. I've got a whole bunch of questions, so I've decided to put them in a numbered list so they can easily be answered. 1. What would be the best e-mail application to use if the user has both a corporate e-mail account running off a MS Exchange server and a standard POP3 account? The exchange server is not only used for e-mail, but also for contacts and calendar information. 2. With regards to the corporate account, am I pretty much stuck to MS Entourage or are there better options? 3. Can entourage simultaenously handle both accounts seamlessly or would it be better to divide the work up into different apps (ie. Entourage for the corporate acccount, Apple's Mail for the POP3 account)? 4. Can Mail handle corporate accounts running off an exchange server? If so, how does it compare with MS Entourage and can it read the contact / calendar info off the server? I'm trying to help out a potential switcher and any help would be greatly appreciated!
I'm using MS Exchange 2003 at the office and I can safely say that Mail.app is enough for routine email tasks as long as the MS Exchange server administrator has enabled POP3/SMTP. As for contacts and calendar, I think its still possible with the built-in OSX apps as long as the server also has LDAP and WebDAV enabled though I havee't personally tried it (too painful!).
Unfortunately, the administrator did not enable POP3/SMTP. He uses IMAP. Does this mean Mail can no longer work for this account?
I use Entourage X in our corporate environment running Exchange 2003. 1. What would be the best e-mail application to use if the user has both a corporate e-mail account running off a MS Exchange server and a standard POP3 account? The exchange server is not only used for e-mail, but also for contacts and calendar information. CHRIS: I personally use Mail for my personal email accounts running on IMAP while using Entourage X for office email access to the Exchange server. I suppose that I can run all the mailboxes from Entourage but I think Mail is such a great app that I use it anyway. In addition, using Mail for IMAP access to personal email prevents me from getting errors when I start up Entourage and do a send and receive when I'm not connected to my corporate network. It must be noted that outgoing POP and IMAP access is not allowed on our corporate network, which means I can only check personal email from outside the LAN or via webmail. Entourage uses IMAP to access email and uses DAV to do contact and calendar syncs to the Exchange Server. While you are in the LAN and if your Exchange Servers have been hardened, you may typically not be able to access Exchange via DAV which leads to all sorts of hassles. I had to request my Exchange Admin to white list my IP address on the permissions of IIS on the Exchange Server to allow me to access the machine using a protocol other than IMAP. This is fine for in-office access, but when I am out and use IPSec, it becomes a problem because the VPN concentrator gives me a dynamic IP so I can only access my email (via IMAP). Calendar and contacts are not synced via IPSec because of the access restrictions on the Exchange Server. 2. With regards to the corporate account, am I pretty much stuck to MS Entourage or are there better options? CHRIS: I think that for full or close to full Outlook functionality, Entourage is the best. Second would be Outlook itself, which I occassionally use running on Virtual PC. One thing that I cant figure out, though, is that I am not able to access free/busy information while using Outlook 2003 on Virtual PC. I use Virtual Switch networking on VPC and therefore connect to Exchange via MAPI since I use Exchange. However, free/busy information still does not appear. On Entourage, free busy information appears fine and I can do LDAP lookups to our Active Directory without any problems. You can use Mail to access your Exchange mailbox as well but I cant seem to get iCal to sync with Exchange, regardless of whether I am in or out of our network. I note that iCal tries to connect to the Exchange via OWA, which uses DAV. Still doesnt work for me. I cant get contacts to sync either to Address Book. but then again, it may be more of a configuration issue because I dont know much about LDAP. For me, Entourage is still it because I get an Outlook type usability with full PIM integration (meeting requests, GAL Lookups, etc.) all on one application. 3. Can entourage simultaenously handle both accounts seamlessly or would it be better to divide the work up into different apps (ie. Entourage for the corporate acccount, Apple's Mail for the POP3 account)? CHRIS: When I use Entourage, I always set it to do a send / receive every one minute to make flow of email as real time as possible. However, when I am not connected to the LAN, I get errors of not being able to access the Exchange Server so I just separate apps for corporate and personal email to make usability a lot cleaner. 4. Can Mail handle corporate accounts running off an exchange server? If so, how does it compare with MS Entourage and can it read the contact / calendar info off the server? CHRIS: Yes, it can, as long as your Exchange Administrator opens the IMAP ports on the Exchange Server. However, since the calendar and contacts work on different apps (iCal and Address Book) I find integration kinda difficult. I cant really answer this based on experience, though, since as mentioned above, I could not get iCal and Address Book to sync with our Exchange. I dont think GAL lookups are available through Mail as well but I wouldnt really know. In summary, I am pretty happy with my Entourage setup to Exchange now. Note that I am still using Entourage X. This is not by choice but because I cant seem to get Entourage 2003 to work with Exchange. It may have something to do with SMTP relays and stuff within our network but I just cant get thing going. It connects to the Exchange, but no data goes through. In any case, the differences are cosmetic to me anyway since I dont use the Project Center of 2003.
