[mso] Re: Sharing Contacts and Calendars in Outlook.

If you aren't going to "get exchanged" then IMHO you may have to go with a
fragmented solution... But that isn't ness. bad.

There are solutions on the market for collaborative calendars and other
solutions for email "servers".

I think your best bet is to throw it open to the users as a sort of
challenge... and be honest... Get them involved and drop yer price a bit.
Tell 'em... you don't know... Get the clients people to search for
themselves for what they prefer... if they are willing... or you do the
search work yourself... Perhaps for a bit of extra dosh... After all,
evaluation of 3rd party software for a solution for them prob wasn't in the
original deal... and eventually present a number of options. Ultimately *the
clients will **have** to choose* so the best is as I said to be up front and
get them as involved as poss IMHO.

As I said before, 10 computers is quite a lot and you may not get a "cheap"
solution at all. But... You could even consider splitting the network up
into different networks... Like sales and so on. That *may* keep you under
the limit for small networks. Dunno.

I've had good experience from Ipswitch... They seem to "care" and their
suppott is very good... And they come in free under the the 5 computer
limit... At least for an email server anyway.... But that's only an email
solution... You want a calendar as well. There are 3rd parties that do that
as well... For a few $$ of course.

If it's a startup and for so many computers, I'd go with ditching any
thought of peer to peer and invest in a reasonable server-client
arrangement.
The hardware nowadays isn't the prob... It's the software. For a Microsoft
solution that means Server 2003/8 (I think 8... Who knows!!) or even the MS
small biz solution,,, which I don't have experience of... Sorry.

You could also try Linux, Apache or any number of server solutions.

As a last word... You could go with a web based solution. People would "log
on" to the site to get thier web mail and so on... It's worth thinking about
and is pretty future proof.

Web solutions also have the advantage of automatic backups... If they're any
good... So there is a **very big** added advatage there... Backups off site.

Anyroad..
HTH
Lisa


> Thanks Lisa:
> 
> The office is still an upstart, so they haven't had much in 
> the way of funds to invest in network/server equipment.  So, 
> they are getting by on what they have at the present time.
> 
> They are prepared to spend money.  I did find a few 
> solutions, but wanted to get personal experiences from those 
> that may have implemented these solutions in the past and 
> what successes or failures they have had.  They are prepared 
> to spend a little money, but they are not going to go for a 
> new Exchange server, etc.
> 
> You are correct.  Microsoft killed the "net folders" option 
> in version 2002.  I wish they would have implemented 
> something like this for 2003 and 2007, but agree with you.  
> I'm thinking it was a marketing decision to encourage people 
> to purchase Exchange.

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