Rowan,

Let me provide the full situation: I'm still using Office 2000 on an XP box, and within the entire suite only using Outlook 2000 for industrial use. A portion of my business' customer service, customer management, communication, time management, and project management functions have become dependent on Outlook's features (I know, I know, bad Sammy G). The rest of the Office suite is disposable because most work is done with Abode CS, Intuit QB, Finale, etc.

Regardless of how much improvement has been done with Office 2007, those improvements are judged in comparison to previous Office releases and not to Adobe CS. Thus, why pay $300+ (upgrade) to $650+ (full version) for Office 2007 if I can find an equal or superior alternative to Outlook, when Outlook is the only thing I need? A reason certainly wouldn't be for the outstanding MS customer service. :)

Meanwhile, I'm dealing with another issue. I'm going to have to buy at least one, likely two, new CPUs in early Jan 2007 as I'm moving into a bigger office at the year's turn. The workstations will be needed for new staff hires. The Vista/Office 2007 release couldn't have come at a worse time for me, as I certainly don’t want to buy a ‘Vista upgrade-ready’ PC in early Jan (what a joke!), nor pick up Office 2007 in late Jan and run it on an XP platform.

This is why I am looking for an email client solution that offers the same functionality as Outlook. Unless you have warnings to the contrary, I would like to get out of MS Office, given that there are alternatives to the Office suite (mentioned above), and given that most office documents I share with outside parties are converted to .pdf before going out.

Thanks for everyone’s input. For somebody who sits alone most of the day, I am really glad to get your thoughts because I have no interaction with IT.