Need Recommendation for email program

[Microman]

Currently don't have gmail account. Just work, and Hotmail.

Last couple of days, I have been helping wife set up groups, but having a real hard time with Hotmail. Keeps saying that the "Sorry contacts are unavailable" Keep editing, and trying to do some groups last night and today, and still keep seeing things that I thought I had deleted.

Should I dump using Hotmail, and use another program to do my email manipulations?

Thanks.

[IronMac]

Hotmail isn't a program per se. Maybe you can elaborate on what you're doing?

[chas_m]

Have you considered actually using real email instead of spam-feeder services like Hotmail?

Have you considered using your computer as a tool rather than a portal for stuff like this?

IOW, what IronMac said, with my additional comment: lose the training wheels.

[tuqqer]

Mail (free and comes with your Mac), or Entourage (not free, and some feel more robust). Those are the two most popular choices.

[Robert M]

Chas,

I think your comments were unnecessarily harsh and, to an extent, off-base. There is a time and place for web based systems like Hotmail and Fastmail and a different time and place for a local mail program. For example... At home and work, I use Mail with IMAP. It works quite well and it's nice having access to all of my mail and mail hierarchy regardless of location.

However, on my Windows laptop, I stay with just the Fastmail webmail system. It's primarily because I didn't want to be bothered setting up _another_ e-mail program for use with my IMAP account. It's surprisingly capable and, at times, has many benefits over a local mail program. For example, if I manage my e-mail contacts with Fastmail, I have access to them regardless of my location. The same cannot be said with a local program like Mail or Entourage. If I use the fastmail filtering system, I don't have to worry about managing three sets of filters over three different machines.

The question is, do I want to use a local mail program which is likely to be far more powerful than a webmail system or is a webmail system offered by a e-mail provider like Fastmail sufficient. for most people, it's more than capable for their basic e-mail usage and a full scale email program is actually overkill in many respects.

Robert

[SteveO]

If you liked Claris Emailer, or Claris Emailer Lite, you'll like Entourage. (My understanding is when Claris Emailer went away, MS hired the Apple devs to create Entourage.) It's essentially the same program. I tried .Mail early in its development and didn't care for it, but I think it's much improved now, though. I use Entourage for X (an older version) on 10.4.6 and am pretty satisfied with it.

[deckeda]

^^ Close. MS hired the Emailer team (or part of them) and the result was Outlook Express 4 (there weren't any 1-3 versions; MS just wanted the email app to be the "same version" as the web browser app ...)

Entourage is built upon Outlook Express, at least Entourage 2001 was a close cousin to Outlook Express 5. You can even change the Type and Creator code on an Outlook Express email message to Entourage's and have it fully work in Entourage.

Outlook Express and Entourage are still my favorite full-featured Mac email apps but I no longer use them. My worry about Entourage still is the legacy Emailer approach to all messages being contained in a common database file. I realize this helps speed but if and when the db file goes bad, you lose e v e r y t h i n g unless you can fix it. Mail's MBOX messages are a bit more standard should you need to dig into one in a jam.

[ka jowct]

You could also check out Thunderbird.