I worked on a nuclear MRI imaging venture at Bell Labs in Holmdel for a short period back in 1986 - went to the conferences, etc At the time GE was the market leader, and some guys at the Labs organized an "intrapreneurial" venture to tackle the remote imaging problem. Doctors didn't trust remote electronic MRI or X-Ray images at the time, no matter how how the resolution - they wanted FILM! :) The technology was already incredible by then - I can only imagine how much it's advanced in the past 25 years.

Best of luck with getting the back squared away.

I'd like to pose the question, though: is mobile computing dead?

agree - Mac Mail and iCal are better apps than their corresponding apps in Outlook for Mac.

But the Contacts application in Office for Mac 2011, looks to me to be much stronger, than Address Book. It's a cleaner GUI, with a tabbed interface.

Outlook for Mac 2011, the more I have used it, the more I am disappointed in Microsoft. I have a circle of friends in the UK who are Outlook Gurus. They reached the same conclusion - Microsoft may be about to create an "Entourage II" because they are afraid to bring the full power of Outlook to OS X.

That's logical... if MSFT builds an Outlook application for OS X that is as good, and as fully-featured as Outlook for Windows (aka Office 2010), then they will likely give up at least 10 points of market share, from WIndows 7 to OS X. So you can see why they are dragging their feet with Office for Mac 2011, and Outlook in particular.

Despite all that... in my experience, after using it for a few days, the Contacts application within Outlook, kicks AB's tail. And there's no reason not to use JUST the Contacts application within OL. Just launch it, then hide the left sidebar, and never think about Outlook email/notes/etc again... just use OL as a contacts client.

I still prefer using Evernote, as an AB replacement. Despite it's lack of integration with other apps, the fact that it OCR's everything fed into it, and allows access from any browser/platform, makes it more useful to me.

I just read through all the comments on this thread... a lot of good thoughts and ideas. I have been seeking "the best PIM" since about 1995, and the frustration continues... both in OS X, and on the Windows platform... the app that everyone uses the most, every day [sigh].

I interviewed Mitch Kapor about this "PIM quandary" at his HQ"s in SF in 2004... he's been trying to resolve it, with the Chandler project, for at least 5 years... to no avail. Mitch and his partner Jim Manzi invented Lotus Agenda, to address this very problem, before creating Lotus 123. He still considers it his greatest invention, even compared to Lotus 123. But PIMs are tough to commercialize and get through the channels; you have to go up against the biggest players.

I don't know why i didn't mention this Address Book replacement before - because I've been using it as my own Address Book replacement since Feb of this year, when i went paperless.

E V E R N O T E !

I stumbled into this solution more or less by accident; i was already using Evernote because it gives me access to my reference information in the cloud, from any device. Because it OCR's everything you put in - even words imbedded in images - i just scan business cards, move then into my "Contacts" notebook, and all the keywords are indexed. I can search by area code, city, name, etc. There is no need to organize anything, just pile all your contacts in there - even hand written records. Evernote figures it all out, and it's always at your fingertips. You can add notes, lists, etc.

Hard to beat, practically speaking. And Evernote does so much more. In other notebooks, i have (e.g.) an inventory of everything I have in storage, with a list of the contents of each container, photographs, notes, etc. In another, 15 years tax records. All of the serial numbers for my software licenses. They allow 500MB each month, of new uploads, on the paid plan (~$45/yr).

Here's a related option, Brad -- DayLight Productivity Suite for iPhone and Mac. It's an enhanced address book / PIM for the iPhone (and companion Mac applications) that has some CRM functionality:
http://www.marketcircle.com/daylite/
http://www.marketcircle.com/daylite/iphone/

I'm about to give it a workout...

OK - after 8 hours with Outlook - beautiful interface; actually nicer than Outlook for Windows. Very useable.

But three early functional limitations that I see, right away: #1 it cannot create VIEWS, one of the most powerful features of Outlook; and the essence of a PIM - looking at your data from different perspectives. And #2, it cannot (e.g.) "drag and drop" transform emails into todo items; which everyone loved about Outlook a few years ago. Calendar, Task, Email, and Note items should all be "draggable" to other categories, to convert them into different types of PIM objects. Cannot due (yet), in this Beta version. And #3, it does not allow displaying data by "Groups".

But the interface/GUI is beautiful, it's fast and very usable; those sorts of things could be easily fixed.

Hopefully Microsoft will not create another dumbed-down version of Outlook - an "Entourage II". This is much slicker than Entourage, but the jury is definitely, still out.

I was heavy into Outlook for years, had probably a dozen books on it, programmed it in VBA for GTD, used a lot of add-ons, used to hang out at SlipStick.com (Sue Mosher, an Outlook MVP's site), and i spent a huge # of hours optimizing Outlook for my GTD setup. So i have a love-hate relationship with Outlook.

I was a fan of Arabesque Ecco before NetManage bought it, when it was the #1 PIM and Outlook was just an upstart - i came up to Redmond to interview the founders, it was so compelling. The NetManage acquisition killed off the only other truly great Windows PIM, and it took Outlook many years to catch up. There are still several things that Ecco was great at, that Outlook can't touch.

I hope that Microsoft is truly serious about this new Mac version of Outlook! I can understand where they might not be, since this one app might double the market share for Macintosh computers - or even more.

OK, I'm running Microsoft Office for Mac Beta 6 now.... have been using Outlook for the past 45 minutes. This is a BEAUTIFUL implementation of Outlook! What's not to like??

I'm going to move everything over into Outlook... now I can return to my Outlook-based GTD system... Outlook is the one thing from Microsoft that I've missed. OK, Excel too... Excel in Mac Office 2004 was buggy and limited.

By the time they release this and I can purchase a production version, should be even better!

Looks like Boy Genius came to a similar conclusion about the Outlook component of "Office for Mac 2011":
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2010/04/23/hands-o...

In that article there is this link to a 53-screenshot gallery / overview of the new OS X Office package:
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/nggallery/page-320...

Seems that the entire Beta 6 was leaked on a Torrent, and people are checking it out.

I'm still optimistic that they'll get Outlook squared away by the time it becomes a real product. In the meantime, i'm downloading the Torrent and will put in some hands-on time with Outlook for Mac Beta 6.

Wow, I did not know that there was a Beta version of Outlook for the Mac available. That is a MAJOR bummer.

If Outlook for the Mac truly sucks, that is huge news and might even send APPL shares down Monday. There is a built-in expectation that MSFT has finally realized they should get serious with Office Applications on OS X, and that Outlook (plus updated Word/Excel/PPT) will be the proof in the pudding.

How and why is Outlook for OS X so bad? I will find the download myself, and check it out too. Bummer.

the question is how good of port MSFT will do, with Outlook. They have been hammering on it for 15 years, so if they bring the whole thing to the Mac it should be the best PIM going. But if they just create another "Entourage"-like PIM, then forgettaboutit...

BPOS may look like a blech, but it's very successful - MSFT has 40M seats deployed -- it's already a half-Billion dollar business for them. $10 per seat for hosted Exchange, SharePoint, Live Meetings, and OCS. Second only to SharePoint as their fastest-growing product. But most SharePoint deployments are in-house, while BPOS is a 100% hosted (SaaS) offering. The press spends all it's time talking about Azure, but MSFT's real traction, to date, with hosted apps is actually happening with BPOS.

Yep, on the Mac address book - with such a robust developer ecosystem for OS X apps, it's amazing that no one created a decent replacement for "Address Book". You would think that someone like Omni Group, Panic Software (etc) would be all over that.