I found evolution to be almost as bloated as Outlook...although it is a very well done project considering the support MS gave them (IE none).

I was a diehard outlook power user, to the point where it was almos more of an OS to me than windows itself. As I've made the migration to Mac and Linux I've also changed email clients several times...my first compermise was to use an older windows box with remote desktop so that I could still use outlook in OS X and linx...I play with evolution quite a bit as well as Entourage (mac only)...

Today I'm a big fan of lighter weight email clients and dedicated apps for calendar and address book...but there are limitations. I'm using Thunderbird for email, and with the Lightening plugin it doubles as a pretty good calendering app. I do miss the "groupware" support for sending meeting requests and having appointments move b/t email and the calendar seamlessly..although I've been told there are ways to make it work.

I'm going down this rathole by way of suggesting that if you can don't need the total groupware package and Exchange connector that Evolution provides, you may want to check out Thunderbird and Lightening.... TB seems to handle offline mode quite well, I've only used it a few times, but it worked flawlessly.