Apple Mail cannot encoding issues (Chinese Asian Language)

Question

I've abandon Mail for almost 2 years, 2 issues I had before is the 'disappearing mail' and the encoding problem.
Now with my new MBP 17" I decided to use Mail again. I am getting the encoding problem again.
Things I tried already:
1. set the default encoding using Terminal to "BIG5"
2. check under 'Composing' preference for 'Plain Text', uncheck 'use the same message format as the original message'
3. Tried manually setting the encoding before sending. But in few instance Apple Mail tells me that there is an Error and cannot change the encoding. Even I succeeded in changing the encoding, there is no guarantee that the other side can read it properly.
This usually happens when I 'reply' or 'forward' a Chinese email to someone. So far it happens to the HTML type email.
Still I am getting problem sending mail that Outlook can properly decode by itself. To fix this from the Oulook side, they need to open the message by double click, select encoding for the message, and pick either UTF-8 or BIG5 (if the message is BIG5, select UTF-8 and vise versa) then the message will display properly.
I know this could be an Outlook problem (probably is) but I cannot tell my customer to change encoding each time. I really need a way to do this from the Apple Mail side.
The following is just one example of HTML email I replied and turns out to be BIG-5 under Outlook, but user need to select UTF-8 to view it.
In-Reply-To: <050201c7154d$3fa791c0$bcdd123d@SN012345678912>
References: <[email protected]> <050201c7154d$3fa791c0$bcdd123d@SN012345678912>
Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.3)
X-Priority: 3
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary=Apple-Mail-1--121729776
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
Cc: =?BIG5?B?RXZhSG/EX7XY?= <[email protected]>,
=?BIG5?B?SG9sbHlfUG9sYXLEX7XYs6Ks9cRS?= <[email protected]>,
=?BIG5?B?U3VzYW5hU29vxF+12A==?= <[email protected]>,
=?BIG5?B?UGh5bGxpc8Rftdg=?= <[email protected]>,
=?BIG5?B?S0VOLkpJQbjrvuWoyA==?= <[email protected]>,
"Viv Lee" <[email protected]>,
=?BIG5?B?SmFuZUNoZW6zr6Tlr3U=?= <[email protected]>,
=?BIG5?B?RWR3aW5ZYW+rwKWuxe8=?= <[email protected]>,
=?BIG5?B?MDA3NDalVMBzrvw=?= <[email protected]>
From: James Yao <[email protected]>
Subject: =?BIG5?B?UmU6IMRftdizbqT7pdarfr3osN3DRA==?=
Date: Sat, 2 Dec 2006 07:42:27 +0800
To: =?BIG5?B?vki0ZqzCIEpvYW4gVGFuZw==?= <[email protected]>
--Apple-Mail-1--121729776
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset=BIG5;
delsp=yes;
format=flowed
Hi xxxx...... (body of the message)
I need help here, I still like the operation in Apple Mail but this is killing me. Please help.

Answer 1

Thanks but I tried these already. Didn't seem to work.
I switched to Thunderbird. Took a while to convert my mailboxes (30+ of them) from emlx to mbox and loaded into Thunderbird.
Thunderbird is ok, address book really ***** since it doesn't work with the OSX Address book at all. I had to use vcf2ldif to convert address book but the Chinese character in the Address Book all became ??? in Thunderbird. And the time it takes to convert 400+ address is long (I already filtered the address book from my 1000+ contact)
Font setting in Thunderbird is not good as well. Emails in my folders are in different fonts all the time due to the difference in encoding. I just need to get used to it.
If Apple Mail can just handle encoding better, I will never switch. Both my customer and my family are having same problem, (because we all read/send Chinese Traditional email) Apple should do something. Already send email regarding this to Apple, and if there are other people with the same problem as me, pleas let Apple know about this.