I ’ve spell about my pathetic , misguided in - legal philosophy before on Macworld.com . Despite their son ’s standing in the Mac news media community , several years ago they made the mistake of buying a Dell PC to replace their mature Performa .
The end result , of course , was an adware - invade microcomputer . ( Then there ’s my poor brother - in - law , who I convinced to get an iMac , but wasunconvinced into buy a personal computer , which is now also infested . )
And so this Thanksgiving I was gallant to reform the in - police force ’s menage in the name of the Mac , unpacking a fresh new iMac G5 , bond it to my father - in - law ’s digital tv camera , a new HP multifunction peripheral , and even setting up an ad hoc AirPort meshwork so that I could check e - mail from my PowerBook .
However , the magnanimous workload of the weekend was n’t the set - up : it was transfer all of my in - practice of law ’ data point from their PC to the Mac . bind them via an Ethernet cable system was leisurely . copy all of the digital photos my father - in - law has taken over the years was child ’s free rein , and one quick drag got them into iPhoto . move their music into iTunes was a snap .
But the e - mail , well , that was disturbing . My in - law used Outlook 98 , a Microsoft e - mail program that does n’t store entropy in any readily approachable way . I looked at several different ways to get at their atomic number 99 - mail , include a roundabout method that necessitate plosive in Netscape Mail and Eudora before ultimately reaching a format that Mac mail program can read .
But I finalise on Little Machines ’ Outlook2Mac ( , www.littlemachines.com ) , a $ 10 Windows utility that converts Outlook ring armour to Mac - friendly mbox data format ( complete with attachments ! ) quickly and easily . You point Outlook2Mac at specific Outlook mailboxes , and it extracts them . It ’s that simple .
Yes , Outlook2Mac has its quirks . I ’d notify turning off all antivirus software before using it , because otherwise Outlook get quite irritable about that mysterious new political program that ’s essay to get at all your ring armour . There ’s no easy way to check or uncheck all Outlook mailboxes , which mean I had to fall into place each of my in - police force ’ million individual mailbox by script .
But I ca n’t argue with the result , especially for $ 10 . Once I was done with Outlook2Mac , I was able to drag the resulting .mbox files into suite and get my in - legal philosophy up and running with the closest thing to Outlook that exists on the Mac . The mantrap of the mbox file formatting is , every fairish Mac e - mail program can import it : Eudora , Apple Mail , you name it . Once I was all done , my in - laws had all their mail , all their adhesion , all their address book entries ( Outlook2Mac converts them to vCard format ) , and all their calendar outcome .
Long history inadequate : my father - in - law called last dark . They ’re loving the iMac . It ’s flummox their mail , their photos , and their music . And near of all , none of their spyware or adware .
