MaximumPC 2005 12

Day-to-Day Operations

GETTING THE MAC RUNNING WAS (UNSURPRISINGLY) MUCH EASIER THAN SETTING UP MY LINUX

BOX. BUT HAVING LOTS OF APPLICATIONS TO CHOOSE FROM MADE THINGS MORE DIFFICULT

As a recovering Outlook user, I really

enjoyed time I spent on Linux, using

Thunderbird for email and keeping my

calendar on an old-school piece of paper.

I missed syncing my day-to-day activities

to my cellphone and PDA, but I gained

access to an application with much better

spam fi ltering and more usable rules.

On my move to the Mac, I was pre-

sented with a tough choice: stick with

Thunderbird, move to Apple’s built-in Mail

application, or admit defeat and crawl

back to Microsoft’s Outlook-for-OS-8 app,

Entourage. After I imported all my old mail

from the Linux box into Thunderbird I was

ready to experiment. I fi red up Entourage

to see how it differed from Outlook. After

a few hours spent trying to cope with the

scary-slow interface, I ditched Entourage

for iMail.

The difference was astounding.

The app is lightning-fast, handling even

my super-size 1GB IMAP mailbox with

ease, and it has one of the best spam

fi lters I’ve tested.

Lest you think I’m just blowing smoke

here, I get a lot of spam. Every day, I’m

sent about 3,000 messages,  percent of

which are fi ltered by the company’s anti-

spam software before they hit my Inbox.

Of the remaining 0 messages, about half

are spam of one sort or another. iMail’s

spam fi lter m ags between 40 and 43 of

those 45 messages as spam. That’s a bet-

ter ratio than any other app I’ve tested.

40 MA XIMUMPC DECEMBER 2005

THE MAC SWITCH

ICHAT VS. THE WORLD

One of the fi rst things I do on a new rig is install an IM client

or two. iChat, Apple’s built-in IM client, features support for

AOL Instant Messenger, the open-source Jabber protocol, and

Apple’s own special server-less local IM, Bonjour—formerly

known as Rendezvous. Bonjour chat uses Universal PNP

network discovery to connect to all available clients on your

local LAN. It’s basically IM that connects you to others at your

physical location, rather than your friends.

As a longtime Trillian and Gaim user, the one thing I immedi-

ately noticed about iChat is that instead of just listing usernames

in line after line of conversation windows, iChat uses the graphi-

cal buddy icon, and places your text on one side of the screen,

and your buddy’s on the other. I fi nd that the separation makes

it much easier to follow long,

detailed conversations.

&or the rest of my IM accounts

(9ahoo, MSN, and ICQ) I use

AdiumX (www.adiumx.com). Adium

uses the same libraries as Gaim,

and works reasonably well, but its

windows lack a lot of the visual

panache of iChat. That said, it’s just

as tightly integrated with the OS,

pulling your IM contacts from the

Address Book app.

Apple’s iChat presents even

the weightiest IM conversa-

tions in an easy-to-follow

graphical format.

iMail includes one of the best spam filters I’ve

ever used. The interface is clean, simple, and fast.

While I’m on the subject of productivity apps, I want to call out the deadly

duo—iCal and Address Book. iCal is a bare-bones calendar app that lets

you use as many calendars as you want. The Address Book stores virtually

everything you need to know about all of your contacts, and makes that info

available to every app on the system. Both apps use standard fi le formats:

ICS fi les for iCal and vCards for Address Book, which makes it a snap to

move your info to any other app. Naturally, all the info stored in both appli-

cations is easy to synchronize with my phone and PDA using Apple’s inte-

grated phone- and PDA-syncing utility iSync. Unfortunately, I had to buy a

third-party application for my Blackberry, (available at http://www.pocketmac.net).

Using iCal, I created separate calendars for different types of tasks—one

calendar for personal appointments, one for work-related appointments,

and one for my curling club’s schedule. Each calendar is color-coded and

you can upload any or all of your calendars to a website or .Mac account.

9ou can even subscribe to third-party calendars hosted on the Internet that

include tons of useful information, ranging from your favorite baseball team’s

schedule to TV listings.

ICAL AND THE ADDRESS BOOK

ENTOURAGE VS. MAIL

Setting up multiple calendars in iCal gives you lots of flexibil-

ity, and the ability to post your calendars online kicks ass.