On Sat, Sep 11, 1999 at 02:15:56AM +0200, Stephan Hadan wrote:
> I really don't want to use M$ Exchange to use the wanted features of
> Outlook.
Absolutely no way.
Outlook Professional is a MAPI mail client - that means it needs to talk to
a MAPI server - and the only ones available are on M$ platforms. To do
"proper" Internet-standards based Email in a company environment, there's
nothing that beats IMAP - but it's an Email protocol - not a Groupware one.
MS Outlook connected to MS Exchange server allows you to share calendars (so
you can plan meetings), share contacts lists and share messages via a Public
Folder system.
To do the same in an Internet-standards environment you'd need:
IMAP for Email
LDAP for addressbooks (although this isn't commonly used to allow users to
share personal addressbooks)
NNTP for sharing messages
- but there's NOTHING to do Calendars. That just hasn't come up.
I find that Outlook Express - which is free with Internet Explorer 4/5 - can
be used instead of Outlook Professional to do most of what Professional can
do. It's internal Calendar can even be used to plan meetings with other
Outlook Express users - the only thing it doesn't allow is for the user to
view anothers calendar - but that could be possible via Samba shares?
(getting out of my personal area here...).
Anyway, I manage an Exchange server here - and it's the ONLY thing I loose
sleep over. It's truly a "fair weather friend" - really good when it's going
- but if it dies - you wish you could just pick up and leave for another
job....
--
Cheers
Jason Haar
Unix/Network Specialist, Trimble NZ
Phone: +64 3 3391 377 Fax: +64 3 3391 417
