So you’re a long serving Windows user who has been seduced by the sexy lines and simplicity of the iPhone and now all of a sudden you find yourself standing in the Apple store with your credit card in your hand and a MacBook under your arm. All good so far.

You’re in unfamiliar territory already and feeling slightly uneasy, but with a copy of Microsoft Office in the bag you’re feeling comfortable. You know Office. You know how to use 10% of Word, and at least 5% of Excel, and Outlook keeps you in contact via the Exchange server with the office. Hmm, wait a minute, there seems to be some mistake where’s Outlook? Ent what? What the hell is this Entourage rubbish?

Entourage is essentially Outlook for the Mac, and guess what? It’s clunky, it’s ugly, and it’s slow. Yep, Entourage sucks fat ones.

It’s a legacy app that was developed using the Carbon framework, which looks badly dated against today’s shiny Cocoa apps. But hey, that’s no problem right, because you’ve read so much about Snow Leopard and it’s newly added support for Microsoft technologies, such as Exchange. Ermm, well, sort of.

While it is true that Apple have loaded up Mail and iCal with Exchange support in Snow Leopard, that’s only for Exchange 2007. If you’re running earlier than that, forget it.

Yes I know your iPhone can speak to Exchange 2003 without breaking a sweat, but for some reason Apple decided Mail and iCal don’t need to.

Quite who decided upon that I don’t know, but as far as I’m concerned it’s an idiotic decision – entice enterprise users into the Apple fold with the iPhone and its built in Exchange support, only to punch them in the face when they actually buy a Mac unless they’re running Exchange 2007.

OK, so what’s the solution? Well, Microsoft has already announced that Office 2010 for Mac will see Entourage replaced with a new Mac version of Outlook. but that’s not planned to be shipped until late 2010.

As it turns out, with a bit of tweaking you can get Apple Mail and iCal up and running against Exchange 2003 with the help of DavMail.

DavMail is an open source POP/IMAP/SMTP/CalDav/LDAP Exchange Gateway and essentially sits on your computer, or server if you like, as a form of middleware translating the Exchange proprietary protocols into standard IMAP/CalDav protocols that Apple Mail and iCal can deal with.

Basically it communicates through Outlook Web Access (which obviously needs to be enabled and running on the Exchange server) and maps a bunch of new ports for the protocols which allows you to configure accounts in Mail or iCal as standard IMAP and CalDav accounts.

Once you fire up DavMail all you need to do to get it up and running is to input the URL of the Outlook Web Access portal, and you’re ready to configure your accounts in your favourite Mac applications.

Details on configuring accounts are detailed on the DavMail site http://davmail.sourceforge.net/macosxsetup.html

Once up and running DavMail sits up in the status bar and flashes gently as it accesses the Exchange server. But annoyingly, it also always pops up a notification window when it starts to show you how it’s configured. No matter, we can fix that.

Get yourself a copy of Dock Dodger, and drag the DavMail icon onto it. This changes a plist file inside he DavMail bundle which tells it not to show up in the dock when it’s running, and essentially hides the app from view.

Then open up System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items, and add DavMail into the list of apps that fire up when you log in. Next time you logout or reboot, DavMail will start automatically after login and be ready and running – hidden except the status bar icon – ready for you to open Mail.