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Cathy, I've used Exchange 5.5 for almost two years now. I installed it on a PentiumPro 200 (128meg RAM, 4 gig HD) to support about 250 employees back in July 1997. The same machine and installation have been running ever since, and has had no problem supporting the load of our entire district. Coincidentally, tomorrow I will be installing a new mail server (dual P2-400, 256meg RAM, 2 9gig HD) and moving mailboxes from the old server to the new server. THE GOOD: o Exchange can support POP3, though it's made to use more advanced protocols. All our district employees have Outlook 98 as their email / groupware platform, and Outlook was designed to be THE client for Exchange. We are very happy with Outlook -- not only is the email module powerful and flexible, but the calendar option is very nice as well. I have people in the district using the task list, contacts, and sticky notes as well. o You can create Public Folders for groups of Outlook users. Public folders are kind of like bulletin boards where users can post messages, files, group calendars, etc. My system of tech facilitators use a facilitator-only public folder to post technology requests and jobs. You can design custom forms for public folders that take full advantage of Outlook and the rest of Office -- Exchange has a very powerful and robust development environment, if you're willing to learn it (we've purchased a few books to help us out). o Exchange has an Outlook Web Access feature that lets users read their mail and calendar via a web browser. I've had positive feedback from people on the road who have used this feature. o For us, Exchange has been very low maintenance. Apart from mail backups, it's very rare that I have to do anything to Exchange (besides create mail accounts!). o If you run in an all-Microsoft or mostly-Microsoft shop, Exchange will dovetail very nicely with Office, NT Server, Site Server, IIS, etc. THE BAD: o Much of Exchange Administrator is arcane and nonintuitive (at least to me). You probably will not use about 90% of the management potential of the Exchange Administrator program. If you need to find a certain setting, it's generally not too hard, though you will have to poke around a bit. BTW, we do not have a book or any training on Exchange 5.5. o I don't think there is an Outlook client for the Macintosh. There's Outlook Express, but that's a totally different critter. There used to be an old Exchange client for the Mac which was pretty horrible. Since all our teachers and staff have Pentium or better PCs, this isn't a problem for us. I suppose you could use any POP3 client on a Mac, but you will lose much of Exchange's potential with simple POP3. THE UGLY: I can't really think of any. We've had excellent luck with Exchange. Hope this helps! "Cathy L. Cheely" <cathy@pen.k12.va.us> >We are thinking of using Microsoft Exchange on our mail >server. If you have used this product, can you please share >the good, the bad and the (possibly) ugly? ______________________________ Chris Brown Director of Technology Converse Co School Dist #1 Douglas, WY CBrown@ccsd1.k12.wy.us http://www.ccsd1.k12.wy.us ______________________________ EDTECH has changed addresses. The new list address is EDTECH@H-NET.MSU.EDU. All subscription commands should be sent to LISTSERV@H-NET.MSU.EDU.
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