With the new updates to Entourage from Microsoft, there’s some hope for those of us who have very specific needs for the power that Exchange 2000 brings to business users, but who do not use Outlook. Yes, for those of us who are mac users, the only sensible choice is still Entourage. Sure, the new tools that are available to us on OSX Mail and iCal seem nice, but unless I am mistaken, they still do not work for adequate Exchnage calendar sharing and Exchange integration. Of those who have tried to cross the gap are:

GroupCal - by: Snerdware - With the release of Tiger, we are still waiting for the new patch to get us up and running again. There’s some hope, but I fear we are a long way off.

I would list some more, but for those of us still trying to run businesses with Exchange as the communications tool of choice, but refuse to move from the mac platform, there just are not that many choices.

Why do I still use Entourage?

• Blackberry 4.0 - I no longer need to use a cable to sync my contacts and calendar.
• Entourage Archive - The archive feature seems very nice, and provides adequate backup archival process.
• Friendlier Claris It! for Entourage - Great script for automatically storing email to very organized folder system.

What would close the gap and get us back to the days of Outlook?

• Better use of shared calendars (free/busy calendars) - the new patch does not work!
• Offline mailboxes for better offline storage
• Integrated tasks - tasks should be integrated with Exchange
• Notes integration - notes should be integrated with Exchange

Getting these across features integrated would get this across the goal line for me. Since I am such a complete nut case about the organization of personal information, I am still miserable since some of these obvious features are not yet addressed.