Hello Magnus, MS> Running Exchange servers in big corporations is from the user MS> perspective quite nice. MS> If you want to send a mail to me from the outlook client, you just type MS> `Magnus Sundberg´ in the adresse field. Outlook then automagically looks MS> up my name from the server, and if there is no match or multiple match MS> you get my name with a red underline, a la spellchecker in MS Word. MS> If you just specify `Magnus´ you will get a match of all persons in the MS> adress book whose name start with Magnus.
Unfortunately, if you happen to change Exchange servers (as I did three weeks ago), every Outlook client will be screwed up, because they remember most names as "shortcuts" that no longer work. It gets even worse if you are using delegation - opening the calendar for user XYZZY under Exchange 5.5 does not take the same path as doing so under Exchange 2000, because Outlook remembers a binary address of the calendar, not its human-readable address, even though it displays the same human readable name. MS> There was an interesting article about replacing exchange servers MS> in one of the newer issues of Linux Journal. The thrust of the article is that all the functionality of the Exchange server can be done with SMTP, POP3/IMAP, and LDAP, provided you give Outlook a DLL file that hides the fact that it isn't an Exchange server on the other end. The DLL allows you to enable the "Enterprise" features over standard protocols. Personally, I'm waiting for my Exchange client to change over to a different program than Outlook - their new integrated case management software handles all the fancy Outlook stuff over plain SMTP, using an SQL back-end. They even were nice enough to write it to use either Postgres or MS-SQL, so you can host the whole thing on a Linux box! -- Jeff Brenton President, Engineered Software Products, Inc http://espi.com Questionable web page: http://dididahdahdidit.com Liberalism grants you the freedom to advocate any idea*. * Please see http://www.dididahdahdidit.com/except.php for a current list of exceptions
