entourage

[Chris_Shain]

I'm curious if any mac people are using entourage at all, and the experiences.

I'm a long term palm user and currently use the Palm desktop on my MBPro with no problems at all (but I'm now finding the address book not really powerful enough). I've also used "now" contact and up to date succesfully a few years ago (v3) but have all my eggs in the Palm basket right now. I use apple mail for emailing, but like others I have the occasional issue with attachments sent to clients on PC's which is very frustrating, entourage would stop all that I'm sure.

I need to rev up my database and I'm wondering whether to go down the filemaker pro option or if the entourage suite will be sufficient. I want to set up a database that works and is probably cross platform, as I'm getting a part time person in to work on it for me. I also understand that "2008 office for mac" will be with us soon - so some future proofing would be good - bit hard to avoid MS in that area.

I'd also be keen to know of experiences with hot syncing entourage to Palm devices (I have a treo 650)

any comments ?

Chris

[Jerry Skrocki]

They just reduced the price of the Apple iPhone by $200. It syncs with either Entourage or iCal, your choice of e-mail clients and Safari web browser.

[jamaio]

I use Entourage to hotsynch with the Palm TZ PDA. I keep my central appointment calendar on a Macbook Pro running Entourage. Hotsynching to the Palm allows me to have it handy everywhere I go. If a client calls asking for an open date I can do this while out of the studio then update the main calendar through hotsynching when I return.

I also email Entourage calendar updates (meeting invites) to my assistant, also running it, so she also has a "live" schedule.

Now if I had the time to figure out how to make Entourage fire off a reminder email to the client the day before the shoot I'd be even happier.

[Chris_Shain]

Hi there jamaio,

do you use the address book function of entourage successfully ? or are you using something else for client records. I'm totally hooked on the all in one Palm treo (ph,address bk, diary, email, music etc) and its mac friendly ! however the functionality of the palm address book of my current setup I'm looking to expand.

I'm looking to get someone in part time to work on my client database, and I suspect that entourage may be more expandable, and probably easier to intergrate cross platform. The serious database people tell me that filemaker is "the" way to go - but I'm not sure that I need that level of complexity and does FM integrate with my Palm treo ?

and hi to Jerry - we're not getting iphones in AUS till sometime 2008, so I'm not going to hold my breath for that, but good to know that entourage will work OK (another reason for changing my software now so that its a bit more versatile)

Chris

[Neil Cowley]

I gave up on Entourage because it couldn't manage projects well....the only feature I miss is the east of 'flag for followup' and set a date and alarm for it. But, smart folders in OSX mail make up for it....to figure out the conglomeration of features and add-ons that go together you'll want to take a look at these links:

43 Folders
Kinkless | Productive Creativity
JunkMatcher
mail tags | 43 Folders
MailTags

The guiding principle for all of this is David Allen's Getting Things Done and so the point is that you only want to 'look' at what you need to do. To do that you need to work in 'Contexts' meaning tasks that are similar. So if I'm fulfilling orders I want to look at e-mails that relate to orders......and the rest will follow.