Mac Conversions - Email and Synchronization?
June 29th, 2007
Filed under Ruminations, Running the Business
Wow! Many thanks to everyone who commented on my MacBook 13″ v. MacBook Pro 15″ dilemma. Your comments are helping me tremendously.
(For the curious: while I haven’t ordered it yet, I’m leaning toward the 13″. I have the iMac with a big screen for when I’m in my office, and 13″ is easier to deal with on a plane. And y’all have allayed any concerns I might have had about performance differences between the MacBook and MacBook Pro. Now I just have to pick a color. Though I gotta say that while I’d love to get the black machine, I have a really hard time justifying paying that much more for a different color. But I digress…)
Next question:
As you can probably imagine, email is a big part of my life.
I’ve tried GMail, and I do use my GMail account on occasion, but I just can’t let go of my need for a local repository of email archives with folders. I like having “buckets” to put things into and I need to have my email client fully functional even when I don’t have an Internet connection. (It’s that using-it-on-a-plane thing again.)
So that means I’ll need a good email client for the Mac that can keep (LOTS of) messages organized on the local hard drive, that supports good/fast searching on any email field, that can synchronize between machines (completely, including folders), and that supports archiving off old email.
Outlook has done a barely good enough job of supporting my organization and archiving scheme on Windows. And I gave up synchronization on Windows as a lost cause some years ago since everything I tried was far too cumbersome. So I want something better than Outlook on the Mac. And the synchronization has to be flawless and frictionless.
I’ve played a little with Mail (the default Mac email client). I love the fact that it’s integrated with Spotlight. And I’m intrigued by the .mac synchronization feature. If it can really synchronize my email seamlessly, it would be worth the annual subscription fee.
So…any advice? Will Mail + .mac do what I need for email? Or is there something better I should consider?
10 Comments
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Jun 29, 2007
12:12 pm
You also have the option of moving to Gmail and using Google Desktop for Mac to download your messages to your local box so you can view them even when you’re offline. That way they always stay in sync.
You could also pop everything in Gmail off and leave copies on the server. Then you’d still need a local client–which brings us to your point, but since I’m a Gmail fanboy, I’ve never actually used the e-mail client on the Mac. But I’ve never had an easier time managing my e-mail than I do now–I’m faster to respond, more organized, and my Inbox is virtually clean all the time. But I digress…
Jun 29, 2007
12:46 pm
While I cannot vouch for how good a solution it might be, Brian Marick mentioned EagleFilter yesterday (http://www.exampler.com/blog/2007/06/28/two-useful-mac-apps/)
-adam
Jun 29, 2007
1:02 pm
Glad to hear you are leaning towards the 13″. I’ve been going through the same dilemma, and am going to get the MB for the same reasons you mentioned!
As far as color, have you seen some of the acrylic cases that snap over them….? Actually, I think that ThoughtWorks had a MB with a red cover at CITcon.
PS, the “Test Obsessed” arm band is on my wrist right now! It’s a great prop when I do presentations on testing and agile processes.
Jun 29, 2007
6:21 pm
I agree with Robert’s comments and would also suggest that you get a Google Apps account where you can easily create several addresses for your domain and have central administration.
I have found 2 issues with Google apps: 1. There is no way to tell it to route all mail to a POP account - if its spam filter makes a mistake, you will have to look for that mail online. 2. There is an issue with forwarding mail to certain mail servers. To go around these limitations, I have setup an account with hostgator.com which forwards all email to Google, but from which I can also forward to other accounts. For example, if you want to get all mail and filter spam on the laptop, you can forward it to a yahoo account that has Spam turned off and then use POP to move it to the laptop.
Jun 29, 2007
7:47 pm
The smaller black MacBook is faster than the smaller white MacBook. (No, really! It doesn’t _just_ look faster, according to the specs, last time I looked at the specs.)
The Mac Mail client is very good, with filtering and folders and other nice things, and dot-mac email even has web access (but not very easy to use) through Apple’s site. Not very good at keeping out the spam, though.
However, I’m using multiple laptops and desktops these days, and find gMail essential for accessing mail from anywhere. So I’m shifting away from my dot-mac mailing address, despite some of gMail’s flaws. Very little spam gets through in gMail.
But I don’t travel much - when I do travel, the smaller MacBook’s lighter weight makes a BIG difference.
Jun 29, 2007
9:46 pm
I’ll be interested to see which way you go. The final tether left to cut with my XP laptop is also email–several years worth backlog in Outlook.
Jul 02, 2007
7:50 am
For what it’s worth, I gave up and just do all my work on my laptop, left the iMac to gather dust and eventually be inherited by the kids.
This was 5+ years ago.
My wife does use both an iMac and laptop. She uses Synk (version 5) to synchronize the Documents directory on both. She doesn’t try to synchronize mail, browser, ~/Library, etc. Her mail is IMAP, so she doesn’t have to synchronize (but I don’t think she has any on-disk archives).
Jul 03, 2007
4:12 pm
I use Mail.app with an IMAP service (www.luxsci.com, mention me so I get a kickback :). It gives me what you need, plus webmail when I’m travelling–preserving all the folders. It doesn’t have that nice free quality that gmail has, but I use gmail for bulk items like list subscriptions, and my IMAP account for the personal stuff.
One more thing, if you have IMAP, you can drag your messages over from your POP account in Mail.app to copy them between servers.
Jul 07, 2007
3:53 pm
For me, an important distinction between the MB and the MBP is the ability to duplex the image on an external monitor. The MacBook only allows mirroring - the Pro lets you duplex. It is the capability of duplexing that has me looking at the MacBook Pro. Oh, how I wish they had a 13″ MBP!
Aug 13, 2007
12:38 pm
Becky - what do you mean the MB cannot duplex? I’ve got a 13″ MB, bought a mini-DVI to VGA adapter, and have hooked it up to both flat panel tvs, projectors and whatnot. It supports both mirroring and stretching the desktop across.
With Pages you also get speaker’s notes on the laptop panel while the projector shows the presentation.