I’ve use a Mac as my primary desktop computer for several years. During that time I’ve stuck with using Apple’s Mail.app. Overall it’s been a good e-mail client. However, it hasn’t changed much since I started using it in OS X 10.4 (Tiger) up through 10.5 (Snow Leopard).

It worked well for my needs but I was using Entourage and, more recently, Outlook 2011 (for Mac) at work and as a result I’ve become accustomed to features that I don’t have at home in Mail.app. Specifically, I find the search features in Mail.app lacking.

For example, every now and then I like to go through old e-mails and reduce the storage used by the archives. In Outlook I can refine searches for e-mails with attachments based on attachment sizes. In Mail.app all I can do is identify e-mails with attachments.

This weekend I imported my account settings and e-mails into Outlook. The process was simple.

Mail.app is an OK e-mail client. I’ve rarely had any problems with it but it just hasn’t evolved enough to still make it suitable for my needs.

I’m not planning to use the contacts and calendar functions of Outlook – I’m still satisfied with OS X’s Address Book and iCal programs.