It is fairly easy to set up, and I found it able to retrieve my email. I have several email accounts, and it was able to retrieve email from all of them. The program has copied Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Entourage in their abilities to set up rules, which helps users organize their incoming email. It does not, however, do the same thing with outgoing email. If you are like me, and have a lot of email daily, it is very important to be able to organize your email.
Mail does organize it similar to Outlook.
For me, outgoing mail is just as important, because I have to refer back to it and not being able to organize it automatically makes Mail less than appealing to me. Anyone who has been around email for a while knows that email doesn't always work. Mail, however, puts an annoying warning window up on the screen and waits for you to click on it before the program continues. If this happens while your computer is unattended, then your computer just sits there and no more mail is retrieved. With OS X's purported multi-tasking abilities, Apple seems to have goofed on this one.