Need assistance with Entourage instability

[Philip Mendelson]

Title: Need assistance with Entourage instability

Hi,

I've posed this question a few times before, but really need an answer.
My problems with Etourage on multiple machines are quite severe, as I can get it stable with a fresh identity (and download of everything), but invariably after a few months it will always start hanging and crashing.  Needless to say, it becomes useless at that point and a database rebuuild will NEVER fix it (in most cases it makes it worse).  So, I will always just start over with a new identity.  Doing so, takes hours of download until I can see recent messages.

The question is:  I am using Exchange mode with our Exchange server. 
What are your experiences?  Will this likely be more stable in IMAP mode?  Will I lose some functionality?

Entourage 2004 11.1.0, with Tiger 10.4.2

(I'm composing this message with Outlook web access, as Entourage is once again useless)
Thanks for any help.

Phil