bijansabet.com

First off, I’m a Mac user. We have standardized on Macs in my house (lauren, me, kids, family room and server).

I push these things as far as I can. I lived thru the dark days when IE was the only browser for the Mac. I tolerated System 9 (remember that one?).

It’s not a badge of honor. It’s just my preference. I love the Mac. It works for me in ways that are seemless and smooth. It’s a finely tuned machine. Well most of the time.

I am the lone Mac user at the office.

But at the office, we have standardized on Microsoft Exchange. It has some serious flaws but it’s the best messaging platform for a business like ours. We have 7 investment professionals and we all travel. Everyone has a blackberry or iphone and it’s essential. And Microsoft Exchange combined with the blackberry/iphoen is the best combo out there for wireless sync of calender, scheduling, contacts and email. I have high hopes for Gmail/Gcal but right now it doesn’t have enough functionality for our needs.

So, given all of the above, I have been trying to live with MIcrosoft Entourage which is the client app for an Exchange environment for the Mac. It’s supposed to be Outlook for the Mac. But it’s not. It has less features but that has always been okay with me.

The real problem with Entourage is that it doesn’t seem to scale. My email database is now pushing 8 gigs. And Entourage can’t seem to handle it. It crashes too often or the database gets hosed. It sucks.

So earlier this week, I installed Fusion by VMware. It provides a way for Mac users to run Windows.

I can’t believe it’s come to this.

But I now have Outlook running on my Mac.

(Again, I can’t believe it’s come to this.)

It’s ugly, and Outlook’s UI is nonesensical to me.

But the damn thing works. It hasn’t crashed on me all week. I’ve got it set up so that links in outlook opens up Firefox on the Mac. And attachments also open up with Mac applications.

Someone has to come out with a better messaging platform. Or a better client side apps on the Mac that work with Exchange.

The idea of running Windows on Mac seems like such a waste.