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Exchange Messaging Outlook
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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:
Regular features:
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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New Utilities |
EZLIFE OUTLOOK MESSAGE CLASS WIZARD FAXWARE EMESSAGING SERVER MICROSOFT OUTLOOK MOBILE MANAGER OUTLOOK CONTACTS SCRUBBER RETURN TO SENDER SENTROUTE SPAM DEPUTY TO PUBLISH AN OUTLOOK 2000 CALENDAR AS A WEB PAGE
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Updated utilities |
ORBIS INTELLIWARE OUTLOOK EXTENSIONS LIBRARY PROWRITE |
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Other new resources |
BUILDING COLLABORATIVE SOLUTIONS USING MICROSOFT TAHOE TROUBLESHOOTING PROBLEMS WITH OUTLOOK 2000 MESSAGES FORMAT |
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More Information |
ISSN 1523-7990 |
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Updated Jul 15 2008
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