Microsoft: Outlook Will Replace Entourage in Office for Mac - Business Center - PC World
Entourage on Mac has in general been a disappointment; it reinforces one's view that Microsoft does not really want to offer a good Office product for Mac users. Imagine you spend $350 (!!!) for a software package and get a sub-standard email program that cannot even open PST files and is considerably different from its Windows equivalent (on the other hand, the other Office applications: Word etc. are not very different from the Windows experience). Finally, Microsoft has announced that -- about 15 months later -- they will replace Entourage with Outlook. (Of course, I expect that moving to Office 2010 will entail at least an additional $150 upgrade cost!)
Would it really matter? Why did Microsoft make this (almost) pre-mature announcement?
One can guess that the imminent release of Snow Leopard is a major reason for this. Snow Leopard adds Exchange Server support to the Mail and iCal apps; so many Exchange users would be more than happy to dump Entourage (which serves no other purpose than as an Exchange client today) and shift to the native Mac apps for mail, calendar and address book. These offer much better integration (& sync) with other mail providers (Gmail etc) and devices (iPhone).
In a year's time when Outlook is launched as a replacement to Entourage, perhaps there would be very few Mac users that would have any reason to welcome Outlook. And perhaps, in order to prevent this migration, Microsoft is trying to provide a glimmer of hope to Entourage users... wait for 15 months and your problems will be solved. Well, I am hoping that a good solution is just about 15 days away, and will cost just $29...
Will share my experiences with Snow Leopard / Exchange support later...
Entourage on Mac has in general been a disappointment; it reinforces one's view that Microsoft does not really want to offer a good Office product for Mac users. Imagine you spend $350 (!!!) for a software package and get a sub-standard email program that cannot even open PST files and is considerably different from its Windows equivalent (on the other hand, the other Office applications: Word etc. are not very different from the Windows experience). Finally, Microsoft has announced that -- about 15 months later -- they will replace Entourage with Outlook. (Of course, I expect that moving to Office 2010 will entail at least an additional $150 upgrade cost!)
Would it really matter? Why did Microsoft make this (almost) pre-mature announcement?
One can guess that the imminent release of Snow Leopard is a major reason for this. Snow Leopard adds Exchange Server support to the Mail and iCal apps; so many Exchange users would be more than happy to dump Entourage (which serves no other purpose than as an Exchange client today) and shift to the native Mac apps for mail, calendar and address book. These offer much better integration (& sync) with other mail providers (Gmail etc) and devices (iPhone).
In a year's time when Outlook is launched as a replacement to Entourage, perhaps there would be very few Mac users that would have any reason to welcome Outlook. And perhaps, in order to prevent this migration, Microsoft is trying to provide a glimmer of hope to Entourage users... wait for 15 months and your problems will be solved. Well, I am hoping that a good solution is just about 15 days away, and will cost just $29...
Will share my experiences with Snow Leopard / Exchange support later...
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