I love Mail, but I HATE iPhoto. The application "preview" that comes bundled with the OS is much better for viewing photos, and you can keep them organized your own damn way that way, in your own damn folders. For photo editting you can use photoshop if you have it or google's picasa. Mail is EXCELLENT. iCal needs some work and personally the google calendar looks better, but I only just toured it last week and haven't actually tried to use it yet.

by the way, you can route your gmail and yahoo and stuff through Mail if you want. it's a great program.

What I did immediately was to select a jpeg file and then went to "get info" and set it to "open all jpegs w/ Preview". then i did the same with pdfs. it's a great program. For photo importing from digicams I also highly recommend "Image Capture", another program that comes bundled with the OS. It is awesome--clean, fast, and beats the pants off any other import software I've had to use.

I think Mail, iCal, Address Book, etc are great! They're simple and well-integrated. Granted I'm only using them for personal stuff, not setting up elaborate meetings or what have you.

However, I personally prefer Photoshop and my own file system over iPhoto. Again, depends on how in-depth your user requirements are.

damn myriam...beat me to it! well said.

i only use iphoto for importing from a digital camera. everything else i use photoshop+bridge for.

but the rest of iLife i'm all over like a cheap suit.

the only time i use iphoto is when i'm trying to quickly turn around snapshots for a slideshow during the occasional family gathering...you know, when everyone is bugging you to see the photos you just took and there is really no point in adjusting levels or montage-ing all that shit anyways. it's quite handy for that stuff.