serg.kr wrote:

In my confusion, it appeared that these contact folders were
essentially the same thing as a distribution list.

Contact folders contain contact items. DIstribution lists contact
name/address pairs.

However, I played
around with it a bit more and I think I may understand the difference
a bit better. It seems that you cannot have the same contact in two
different folders (at least I did not figure out a way to do it since
you cannot copy/paste contacts).

Not only can you have contact records all with the same name in multiple
folders, you can have multiple contacts with the same name in the SAME
contact folder.

Also, it is much easier to send an
email to a distribution list rather than all the contacts in a
contact folder.

I disagree. Select the contacts with click/ctrl-click or shift-click (or
group them my category and select the category), then click ActionsNew
Message to Contact to send to all the contacts you've selected.
--
Brian Tillman