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Greetings! Welcome to Vol. 5, No. 19, of Exchange Messaging
Outlook, a biweekly newsletter about Microsoft Exchange and
Microsoft Outlook.
Today's highlights:
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Anna: Virus of the Week
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Clueless about Exchange hosting
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It's official -- Office XP and Outlook 2002
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Don't worry about wiretapping
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Clean your contacts
Regular features:
- New utilities
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Updated utilities
- Other new resources
Anna: Virus of the Week
In the last EMO issue, I warned about the stealthy Hybris/Snow
White virus. This week, of course, it's the Anna Kournikova virus
that's in the news. Our advice is the same. See
http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/antivirus.htm for methods to
protect Outlook against email-borne viruses. For servers, see
http://www.slipstick.com/addins/antivirus.htm and
http://www.slipstick.com/addins/content_control.htm. If you or
your company lost any time over this one, your anti-virus protection
screen is incomplete. Don't put it off. Don't make excuses -- just
fix it.
Clueless about Exchange hosting
I'm not sure what's going on with Exchange hosting -- the concept
of outsourcing your Exchange Server mailboxes and public folders to
an application service provider. A couple of months ago, I visited
the web site for each of the ASPs that Microsoft lists at
http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/techinfo/hosted.htm. Fewer
than half had any readily available information on hosted Exchange.
Only two -- Vobix (http://www.vobix.com)
and Webhosting.com (http://www.webhosting.com)
-- understood that Exchange 2000 can host web-based applications via
the Web Storage System (WSS), not just mailboxes.
When I mentioned this to one of the webmasters at Microsoft, he
sent me off to a different page at
http://www.microsoft.com/ISN/working_ms/asppartner.asp, which
lists 70 ASPs, but still doesn't give you a clue as to who's doing
Exchange 2000, not just Exchange 5.5, or who understands the WSS.
It's almost as if Microsoft doesn't want to help you find a good
Exchange hosting company.
Both Microsoft lists, by the way, are missing at least one
Exchange hosting firm. The hosting story at Intermedia.net (http://www.intermedia.net)
got really interesting this month when they dropped the price from
about $20 per mailbox per month to $9.95! If I had a small company
with good Internet connectivity and lots of roaming users, I'd have
to give this offer serious consideration. It's tough to find
knowledgeable, experienced Exchange administrators, and a small firm
might not be able to afford one full-time. Hosting puts the burden
of security, backup, and server-based virus checking on the ASP. You
still have to worry about what you'll do when the mail server or
Internet connection isn't available, but that can happen with an
in-house server, too. And you'll want to get assurances that you
will be able to migrate your data if you ever want to switch
servers. But it's hard to beat the price.
My travels among the hosting sites also turned up a unique
approach undertaken by CenterBeam (http://www.centerbeam.com)
in several California cities. CenterBeam provides a total turnkey
office IT package, including desktop and laptop computers, wireless
networking, DSL connection, hosted Exchange and SQL Server, and
support, all for $200-250 per month per user. With backing from Dell
and Microsoft, CenterBeam appears to be in it for the long haul,
trying to take the worry about being connected.
Have you used Exchange hosting in your company? What worked? What
didn't? Let me know at
mailto:emo@slipstick.com.
It's official -- Office XP and Outlook 2002
Microsoft has announced that the next version of Office will be
named "Office XP," with the "XP" standing for "experience." The
individual products will still be named for the year (plus or minus
one), so we'll have Outlook 2002. MSDN Universal subscribers can
look forward to receiving a "Corporate Preview" version of Office XP
in an upcoming shipment. Microsoft says it still plans to release
Office XP in the second quarter of this year.
Don't worry about wiretapping
Did you panic over the Privacy Foundation's warning (http://www.privacyfoundation.org/advisories/advEmailWiretap.html)
that HTML-format mail message can carry JavaScript code that tells
the original sender what text is included when you forward the
message? No need to worry. There's nothing new to this warning other
than the payload. The same steps that protect Outlook against
viruses that HTML-format message can carry -- like turning off
scripting in Outlook messages -- will also protect you against this
"threat."
Clean your contacts
We don't always find a utility that fits both on features and
price, but here's one that's irresistible:
Outlook Contacts Scrubber (http://www.teamscope.com/free_utilities.htm)
lets you perform a field-by-field cleanup of duplicate items in your
Contacts folder. It's fast, and it's free.
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