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Entourage is much better than Apple Mail at filtering spam.
 technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

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Entourage, Part 1: Better spam blocking than you get with Apple's OS X 'Mail' software


March 23, 2005


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2005, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2005, The Post-Standard

   When I got back to work after nearly two months of being away, I realized I had to do something about the increasingly heavy load of e-mail that pours into my home office day after day.
   I'd been using Apple's built-in OS X e-mail software ever since I switched from Windows to a Macintosh a few years ago. But Mail, as good as it is -- and it's very good in a lot of ways -- turned out to be no match for the rising tide of spam, scams and regular e-mail coming my way. I was spending too much time trying to get Apple Mail to recognize more spam and not enough time replying to the dozens upon dozens of legitimate letters I get every day.
   So I decided to forgo my inbred suspicion of all things Microsoft and installed the latest version of Entourage, the heavy-duty e-mail-and-calendaring software that Microsoft includes in Office 2004. It proved to be a smart move.
   Entourage is much better than Apple Mail at filtering spam. That's obvious the first day you run it. The amount of spam e-mails that slipped through to my inbox dropped from about 80 a day to less than 10 when I switched to Entourage. That number should be even more impressive when I point out that I had been training Apple Mail to spot spam for a long time, yet had done no similar training for Entourage.
   I get more than 1,000 pieces of mail a day at my home office. About 850 of those items are spams and scams. Having them automatically filtered out keeps me from going bonkers.
   Entourage is much more than a mail program that blocks spam. If you're used to Microsoft Outlook, the mainstay of mail and calendaring for Windows users of Microsoft Office, you'd have a delightful time with Entourage. In some ways it seems like "Outlook Lite" and in other ways it's clearly "Outlook Without Fear."
   Let me explain. Entourage has many of Outlook's features and functions without the unbearable slowness that plagues Outlook. (Remember, I'm referring to Outlook, not Outlook Express. They're aren't related.) So it's a lot like a racecar version of Outlook, slimmed down for speed.
   Yet it's not slimmed down in any way. OS X is what provides most of the speed. OS X is a more modern operating system than Windows XP and runs with less overhead and more efficiency. That counts for a lot.
   But what counts almost as much is the way Entourage sails through mail without having a care in the world for viruses. Unlike every responsibly run Windows computer, an OS X Mac running Entourage has no need for spyware blockers and virus catchers, and this means it can sprint where Windows crawls.
   A bonus: When you install Entourage, it is able to import ALL your Apple Mail items -- all folders, all stored mail, all your rules, even.
   Sound good? I've only just begun. Wait until you hear about what else Entourage can do. I'll tell you about that next week.