I will kill the SOB.
I can't goddamn believe it! I have lost all of my email AGAIN in Outlook Express!

I like XP but this thing with OE is really pissing me off!

Does anyone know of a plugin or program that will backup the damn OE database every time I shut it down?

You sure it's not a virus or something else and not Outlook Express? I've been using OE for years now for numerous accounts and have over 100,000 messages in my folders. I have upgraded from Win 98 to Win 98 SE to Win XP all with the same email settings and never lost a thing. Maybe it's users error and not Microsoft error. Also, there is not a line of code written by Bill Gates in OE.

Rob

Yeah I know, I'm mainly venting.

The first time they got lost when my system failed. For some reason I can't inport them to the new install.

This time I think it might be my fault. When I was originally trying to get the old messages in I apparently left OE's store in the transferred files from the old drive. Not realizing that I did I was cleaning up the HD that the transferred files are still on and deleted that directory since I thought I was done with it. All while OE was open. Now there is apparently no messages left that I can import back in.

DAMN! He's still responsible for the comapny though and right now vengence would feel real good.

i use tweak IE 3.0 to do all sorts of IE and OE backups. you can even select the things you want to back up too. very handy but has to be done manually. backs up messages, registry settings, blocked senders, the whole deal. i llike it.

You sure it's not a virus or something else and not Outlook Express?

Sorry, it doesn't take a virus for Outlook to eat its e-mail database. You can simply look at the thing sideways and it will die.

That's why I've been using Forte's Agent exclusively for as long as I've been on the internet. Rock-stable, and I've never ever lost an e-mail message. Let's see, the oldest message currently sitting in my Agent database is Feb 2000, and if I wasn't so anal about cleaning up old messages, I'd probably have stuff in there from 1996.

Got you beat by a little bit! My oldest message is from Oct 1999.

I use Outlook. I've never lost a message.

Tom

You might try here. http://www.slipstick.com/addins/housekeeping.htm

For some people, Tony, for some people. Like CruzThs I've been running OE since as long as I can remember. I have messages since November 1999. How many? over 4700 (that counts all local folders, which are all maintained in the database). That doesn't count my Hotmail accounts that work perfectly whenever I use them (which isn't often anymore. I'm thinking of letting them expire). Mine have survived numerous formattings, OS upgrades, and computer switches, and still remains intact.

I was under the impression that all you need to do is backup a directory. It's easy to point OE to a new store folder, as long as you say you want to switch to that folder instead of just moving to it or however they worded it(which deletes all your files in the folder you're moving to).

I don't know, I'm lucky I guess. OE is pretty much the only thing I've never had problems with (knock on wood...)

Sorry to hear about that Steve, I have been using an old version of eudora light for my email at it is very easy to back up all of your messages at once, I even formatted my hard drive and then just copied one small file back over and all of my messages are back. Also you have bellsouth like I do so all of your mail should be on the website... unless oe deleted it.

My oldest message is Oct 1999.

Hmm... Jan 16, 1998 for me. It's an email from a developer at Side Effects about how to use dbx to debug custom plugins for Houdini.

I've never actually used email on a Windows box, but I only get viruses from people who use Outlook.

Sad, I know, but my earliest emails are from 1993. I think I received them using zmail on an old SGI box and as they contain useful technical info I have never deleted them. They are still fully compatible with my mail apps on various *nix platforms I have round the house. Why do people need to upgrade mail clients anyway? Except for security reasons.

At work I use Notes and Outlook - hate them both, but Notes wins hands down for stability and user-friendliness. When I have to use Outlook I disable everything I can, and force it to only receive plain text.

strange.
I use outlook express on XP and haven't lost a thing so far.
maybe connected with the fact that all mail is stored on my imap server?

and to quote the obvious: wouldn't have happened with linux....


bye,
[L]


ps. I would NEVER try to convince you to stop thinking of violence against billborg.

Hmmm, how about running a local IMAP server and pointing OE at that? I've never lost any mail in OE either.

You could leave OE fetching mail, but keep all your folders on the local IMAP server?

Hugo

How would I do that Hugo?

You should be able to just backup the entire OE folder directory. There should be a .dbx file for each folder.

That's what I did for a while. To restore you just create each folder again, open it up in OE so that it creates a blank file and then you can copy your saved folder over it... (It does make sense honest! Not very good at explaining it though)

- Trevor

I just found this in my old mail:

Date: Sat, 16 Mar 91 11:32:56 GMT

Remember 2-digit years? Ouch!

Hmm... I've been using OE for years. My oldest message goes back to July of 1998.
Ive never lost a thing, and Ive switched computers many times since I started using it. Even through the transitions, no sweat.
Last couple of years I've been using IMAP instead of POP.
IMAP is a bazillion(tm) times better than POP. Now its almost impossible for me to lose any mail.
Been using Mdaemon as my mail server running on a Win2k server.

One thing about OE is that it can hide your mail and databases and stuff in places where you dont think they might be.
Lately since Win2k the likely place to try and import mail and settings from is from somewhere around here: C:\Documents and Settings\user name\Application Data\microsoft\identities\etc. etc.
Take a look around that area for your mail. Usually in a folder labeled outlook express or summat with a huge long name that looks like garbage. Youll need to stop hiding hidden folders though.
Good luck.

Z~

You win

I remember that old fashioned stuff made from trees and plants, what was it called - oh yeah 'paper' I'm sure I have some old 'letters' kicking about.

Yeah, I know I'm getting silly now. And I haven't even got the excuse of bumping my post count!

Maybe this will make you feel better..
http://home.epix.net/~tjwagner/gates.html

Also, maybe you could switch to Outlook98 instead. I'm not sure with Outlook Express but with Outlook you can Archive messages, place them in different .PST files for backup purposes and export them.

I've never lost a message and I've been using Outlook98 since...well, 1998. (just went to Outlook2k).

For some people, Tony, for some people. Like CruzThs I've been running OE since as long as I can remember. I have messages since November 1999. How many? over 4700 (that counts all local folders, which are all maintained in the database).

Hope none of those 4700 messages are important. Because Outlook is just a ticking time bomb.

If it's a ticking time bomb, why did they wire it to detonate after over 3 or 4 years? That doesn't sound like a bomb to me. It is for you, but as I said, lots of people here don't have problems with it.

My mail archives used to be just a zip up of my Eudora folder. I've since moved to IMAP for all of my new mail, and once I get the archive issue solved, will open up all the mbox files from Eudora and toss them into my IMAP server.

Thats one thing thats great about Eudora, it uses the standard mbox format for storage, then just creates a seperate index file of it's own for searching and speed.

>> Hope none of those 4700 messages are important. Because Outlook is just a ticking time bomb.

You say this without much merit Tony. I have been a Microsoft employee for 6 years now where everyone in the company uses Outlook for internal email and scheduling. I have NEVER lost a single email (andI get more than 200 messages a day to my Microsoft email account) or have heard of anyone else loosing mail. Sure, Outlook is big, bloated and complicated but it is the best out there. A ticking time bomb, I don't think so. My Empeg crashes far more than any of my Microsoft products.

Okay, you don't know anyone who's lost their outlook email database. I accept that. But I now know at least three, and it's been multiple times for each of them.

I have NEVER lost a single email (andI get more than 200 messages a day to my Microsoft email account) or have heard of anyone else loosing mail.

I've seen several instances between two companies where .pst files have become unreadable by Outlook, and the .pst repair tool has failed. Not many mind you, but I have seen it happen. I personally switched away from Outlook for corporate e-mail a while back, and now just use Eudora tied into the IMAP support of Exchange.

This wasn't due to a reliability problem, but instead the ease fo filter setup in Eudora. I have literially hundreds of filters to toss my messages into the right box before I read them, and 99% were set up by simply right clicking a message, and selecting add filter. From there, I tell it what criteria (from, to, subject) and hit the mailbox it should go to. Nice and simple, and if I want advanced rules, a simple click on the filter screen brings up tons of functionality. If MS chooses to "innovate" the ease of this, I might switch back

And if no one lost mail at MS due to an Outlook virus, I'm impressed with the admins there. I Love you and related ones have spread like wildfire through companies I know of that use Exchange/Outlook. Just as Code Red tore through the network here, and Nimda still makes it's appearance from time to time.

At home though nothing will drag me away from Mail.app on the Mac, or the quickness of just using a web browser to my IMAP server.

I have been a Microsoft employee for 6 years now where everyone in the company uses Outlook for internal email and scheduling. I have NEVER lost a single email ... or have heard of anyone else loosing mail.

Yeah, but you've probably got all of your mail sitting on an Exchange server, right? And you've probably got a dozen admins that do nothing except deal with that Exchange server, right? And they're probably good enough that they can perform restores from tape without you ever knowing about it. Folks here are talking about local stores, which are much flakier.

And I find it hard to believe that your Windows never crashes. You sound like this guy I heard the other day on the TV that claimed that George W. Bush is our most intellectual president ever. On the other hand, if you really never have had Windows crashes, I'd like to get your secret, as would the rest of the planet.

Why does everyone hate microsoft? Where would computer technology be if it weren't for microsoft? People always bash microsoft but you don't see them making OS's or email programs. Is it just because microsoft is mainstream and some people have a tendency to hate anything and everything mainstream? If microsoft weren't so huge I bet many of those same people would be saying they love microsoft and calling Bill Gates their hero.

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My Empeg crashes far more than any of my Microsoft products.

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ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!

oh, thank you ... needed a good laugh for the day

I hate Microsoft because they have instilled in the general public the expectation for their computers to not work correctly. Also, they go out of their way to make their products incompatible with standards just enough so that if you want to run Windows, it makes it very hard to run anything else at the same time.

On the other hand, you're at least somewhat correct in that they have often spurred the mainstream computer market (or at least purchased companies who have). But if they hadn't, honestly, someone else would have.

As to the implication of Bush being dumb....he graduated from Yale, flew fighter jets, ran many successful businesses, was in charge of one of the largest states in the nation, and became president. Daddy or no daddy, you gotta have your shit together to pull that off. I'd say that people who are deluded by the liberal media just because they put a picture in the paper where he's making a funny looking face are the real dumb ones. But yes, the pictures that the papers find of him do look funny.

I'm sorry, but I just can't get over this. How can an owner of an Empeg sit there with a straight face and say his Empeg crashes more often than any Microsoft Product?????
Unless maybe you tried installed windows CE on it or something.

Isn't there some board rule to disallow this type of blasphemous comment?

They must really warp your brain over there in M$ country. I feel sorry for you.

I personally switched away from Outlook for corporate e-mail a while back, and now just use Eudora tied into the IMAP support of Exchange.

Of course, I know people who have lost their Eudora email databases, too. So I guess one can't win, can one?

Hey, beta 11 did crash more than my Windows 2000 box does. Well, until Hijack fixed the Jiffies bug.

1.03 and beta12 fared better than any MS product for me (and the empeg gets more uptime than any of my MS products), jury is still out on beta13.

your mentioning one of M$'s most stable products ever made in their existance (win2k). Which I have and have hardly any crashes at all (but it still does as any OS should right?).

He said ANY M$ products. That includes such greats as OE, win 3.11, and the all time solid rock OS, winME.

And did any of you have a chance to use the 1st Memphis? worse than winME.

I have to pull the plug on my computer (win 98) almost every day.

I hate to add to the drones of the mindless Zombies, but my empeg crashes more than my MS boxes... That and the TiVo... I have to bring that thing back from the dead monthly.

This Dell with XP on my desk here at work hasn't crashed since I got it. Sure, lots of apps have died and it's become unresponsive a few times, but crashes? Zero... Just kill the offender in task manager. Maybe it's just my imagination. I did grow up in Redmond, WA.

And I have OE emails from ~1995 at home. I almost wish I did loose my email regularly...

ok, lets even the score. Run nothing on your empeg other than the latest RELEASE version of the code. No beta, no hijack, no added daemons. Just like it was intended to do.

Then see how often it crashes. And if you want to talk about being able to kill and restart applications .... I bet if you had console access to the empeg at all times and something crashed, you could just kill -9 the offender and restart it and you would have a much greater uptime than Windows.

And I say again, your also talking about 2000/XP .. which I will admit is their best products to date. As opposed to the other 95% of their products.

And BTW, doesn't "unresponsive" constitute a crash?

I have to pull the plug on my computer (win 98) almost every day.

And that, Grasshopper, is the answer to your other earlier question.

First, there's a big difference between ``intellectual'' and ``not-an idiot'' or even ``intelligent''. Second, ``ran many successful businesses''? The only business he ever ran that didn't fail was the Texas Rangers ball club, and he just bought into that. All of his oil ventures (Arbusto, Spectrum 7, and Harken) did. Third, if you think that being elected to or being governor of Texas or the President isn't the work of pretty much everybody but the politician, you've got another thing coming. Fourth, while this is really not relevant, I've always wondered why Dan Quayle was made fun of for joining the National Guard to avoid service in Vietnam but George W. Bush isn't for doing the same thing. (I'm not making fun here. If I ever become eligible for a draft, I'm moving to Canada.)

Fifth, the last thing I want to do is spur you into being the huge troll you were before, so this is the last thing I'll say on the subject, at least in this thread.

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As to the implication of Bush being dumb

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He also did Cocaine, can't speak, and he was doing the pledge of allegiance, and told every to hold their right hand up in the air. All the new us citizens looked at him like he was crazy. So I would also, like to agree that he is one of the dumbest presidents we have ever had. He just got lucky and has a high Approval rating because most of the USA are also crack heads. (except for members of this board )

As for ms products, my company runs a lot of windows servers. We have multiple win2k servers that run for over 200days, and only have to be rebooted because of a little moving around of servers. The only thing that annoys me with Microsoft is how many security bugs their software has, but hopefully sp3 might fix some of those problems… doubt it highly. My Workstation runs XP, i leave this thing running for usally about a week with no a single problem. Usally i have over 30 IE windows open, visualstudio.net, photoshop, emplode, Outlook XP, works, aim, msn, nav, plus many other programs. Without a single problem!

I liked the idea congress had to make software companies finically responsible for security glitches within their software.

Anyway, that’s just my option, I could be wrong!

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Run nothing on your empeg other than the latest RELEASE version of the code.

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But I don't do that in XP? And you're probably right about the empeg console access, but I usually don't have that readily available on Interstate 5...

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And BTW, doesn't "unresponsive" constitute a crash?

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Only if it isn't temporary... I've been able to recover pretty well.

Of course, I know people who have lost their Eudora email databases, too.

It's gotten much better about built in recovery of a corrupt mbox file now. But I admit I had a problem in an earlier version. Of course to fix it, all I needed was notepad, and not some propritary tool. MBox is completly text based, and so I simply loaded up the broken file, found the problem that was choking up Eudora, and moved on, minus one random e-mail (it was a spam message that got corrupted, no big loss :-)

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And I find it hard to believe that your Windows never crashes. You sound like this guy I heard the other day on the TV that claimed that George W. Bush is our most intellectual president ever.

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Now don't go making things up.. I NEVER even mentioned the word Windows so don't go mis-quoting me. That's just not fair.

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I'm sorry, but I just can't get over this. How can an owner of an Empeg sit there with a straight face and say his Empeg crashes more often than any Microsoft Product?????

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I stated that my Empeg crashes more than any of the Microsoft products that I use, maybe not what you use. What do I use on Windows?

WinXP
Outlook
Outlook Express
Internet Explorer
Media Player
Emplode

That's it. And yes, they all crash less than BOTH of my Empegs.

Now the secret.. I work at Microsoft making Mac software. I'm a Mac person and don't use my PC much except at work for corporate email and OE for personal email (because my Mac is always tied up doing development stuff).

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They must really warp your brain over there in M$ country. I feel sorry for you.

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You gave yourself away with this statement. Let me guess, you run Linux. I actually feel sorry for you.

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1.03 and beta12 fared better than any MS product for me (and the empeg gets more uptime than any of my MS products), jury is still out on beta13.

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Agreed.. I don't remember ever crashing with 1.03. I never had b12 so can't comment. Just installed b13 so can't comment.

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leftyfb - He said ANY M$ products.

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Maybe you have so many problems with Microsoft because you can't read the instructions. Again, I said, "MY MICROSOFT PRODUCTS"

Now the secret.. I work at Microsoft making Mac software.

Aha, thats why. I've learned that all the best MS programmers are over in the Mac side, or the people coding high end things like the kernel for NT. Office for the Mac is awesome, and once I get my Powerbook, I might actually think about buying a full copy.

I tried the 30 day demo of v.X but can't justify the expense for just my underused Cube with 2 valid licenses of Office XP. One is a corporate license I use on my corporate issue laptop, and the other license is from a free copy I got from an MS show in Denver. And speaking of MS shows giving out free software, know of any in the Colorado area that give out Office for the Mac?

Other than rebooting to finish installs (MS still can't get that right, but they're getting better), my Win2k box has never gone down. My all time best uptime between reboots is about 4 months.

Admittedly, I've had over a year uptime on my Linux box, but I use it a lot less intensively. All in all, Win2k is probably the most stable thing ever to come out of MS.

My gripe with MS is not with their products. It's with their predatory and monopolistic marketing behaviour -- including their not-quite-standard implementations of standards.

A mac user that works for Microsoft, touting Microsoft products that he rarely uses over a machine running a flavor of linux and saying he feels sorry for a linux user.... now i've heard everything.

And yes, I have multiple machines running Linux, but the main machine's I use run win2k and XP.

But, since you mentioned your a mac user, i'm done arguing with you... sorry, past decision on my part not to get into OS debates with mac users, they only tend to get ugly.

I agree. Microsoft makes awesome Apple software, dating back to Applesoft BASIC. In fact, MS Apple products that have Windows twins regularly outstrip those twins in features, usability, and stability.

So kudos to you, CruzThs.

decision on my part not to get into OS debates with mac users, they only tend to get ugly.

Yes, that's what usually happens when you start arguing about religion...



tanstaafl.

So I guess one can't win, can one?

Depends on how you define "win". I define it as "Pine". Using that since since ~1991 for the "real" (versus "work") me and it hasn't lost a message. Not sexy, some shortcomings, but it spins like a top.

FWIW, a cohort of mine experienced the non-fixable corrupt PST. Me, I just get corrupt OLK and have to re-synch. Gad I wish my employer had just let us stay POP clients. Exchange server outages were somehow less annoying then!

I have been an Exchange client for my last 3 employments and am depressingly amazed at the amount of scheduled and unscheduled maintenance that the Exchange servers seem to require. In fairness, it is an area that is a complete black box to me and it is conceivable that if the quality of systems admininstration was at the level that CruzThs enjoys at MSFT, then perhaps things would be hunky-dory. As a practical fact, though, it seems like I can't manage to get hooked up with an Exchange server with respectable uptime. My latest Exchange headaches are intermittent "invalid credential" issues that seem to result from NT/2000 domain authentication problems...but I can't be certain.

Anyhow, give me Pine, brother, give me Pine.

Excahnge is a bear to administer. All but the smallest organizations should probably have a full-time Exchange admin if they're planning to run it. And even then, scheduled downtimes in the neighborhood of once per week seem par for the course.

Compare that to running sendmail or postfix or exim or whatever MTA you might use plus Cyrus or whatever IMAP server you want to use (I chose IMAP as an example since it most closely resembles Exchange's features) probably requires the occasional attention of whatever Unix admin you might already have.

Not to mention the fact that Exchange, much like any other MS product, is pretty much a black box, even to the administrators, so that the equivalent of reboot and reinstall is one of the major troubleshooting methods.

I use Pine, too, including PC-Pine. I have ever since I fell in love with IMAP and had to switch away from mh. Occasionally, it is nice to have a nice GUI for the very occasional task, and Pine's lack of real threading is a serious drawback, but otherwise, I'd seldom rather use anything else. Apple Mail.app runs a close second these days, though.

Okay troll, I'll bite...

Why does everyone hate microsoft?

For a large number of reasons, many of which have been mentioned already.

Where would computer technology be if it weren't for microsoft?

Farther ahead, I think.

I got started on computers back in '85 on a Wang PC (go ahead and snicker, ye of juvenile humour). It had a word processor that was far superior to any word processors that Microsoft produced until roughly 1993. My parents continued using that word processor until 1996, when they gave it to a friend. One version, no upgrades, 11 years. Ever heard of a Microsoft application with that kind of staying power?

Of course, who can forget that Apple started the GUI revolution (okay, some people assert that even they stole they GUI from someone else).

There is also the Amiga that died an unfortunate death. In 1985, a full 7 years before Microsoft's GUI became useable (Win 3.1), they had a colour GUI (Apple's was B&W, and PCs were still all text-based) that was capable of 3D graphics and video editing -- two things that Windows machines were incapable of doing until the early to mid 90s. NewTek (the company that writes Lightwave) released Video Toaster for the Amiga in 1990.

In the instance of software, Microsoft purchased SoftImage (a Canadian company that developed the then-visual effects industry standard 3D animation software). At the time, the hardware market in VFX was dominated by SGI. SoftImage got ported to NT, and they started writing the next-gen system (XSI). Under MS control, XSI was delayed, and delayed, and delayed. Eventually MS sold SoftImage, and XSI made it to the market a couple years ago. It has lost so much market share that it is nearly inconsequential in the same visual effects industry that it dominated so long ago. Since it was developed using MFC (development started under MS reign, remember), it only runs well on Windows systems (it uses very flakey replacement libraries on Linux) in a market that is moving increasingly towards Linux (my company in the process of buying another 80 Linux machines).

Computers would be more interoperable -- see the Kerberos incident.

People always bash microsoft but you don't see them making OS's or email programs.

On the contrary, they are. Linux, Hurd, BeOS, Plan9. There's four, and I've only scratched the surface. Heck, I wrote an OS for one of my classes in university. Hop on google, and you'll find a plethora of email clients. Furthermore, just because a person doesn't have the technical skills to write their own software doesn't mean they are incapable of deploring bad software.

Is it just because microsoft is mainstream and some people have a tendency to hate anything and everything mainstream?

No, it's because the people that don't like Microsoft have used something else, and are aware that better alternatives exist.

If microsoft weren't so huge I bet many of those same people would be saying f microsoft weren't so huge I bet many of those same people would be saying they love microsoft and calling Bill Gates their hero.

I used to like Microsoft and Bill Gates. Then I went to university and got an education.

You make a good point.

What exactly are you doing to make your empeg crash? I don't remember the last time my empeg crashed - definitely not in the last year or so.

Rob

Just curious, what are you guys defining as a crash on your empegs? From what I've seen, beta11 has problems with this, and that's what I have. Several times I've not been able to get a reaction from the player with the face buttons. But usually a little pull-and-puch will get it restarted and working fine. Is that what you guys are calling crashes? Also, this does happen to me more often than on my Win2K box (when my hardware doesn't suck), and I use that far more vigorously.

Bottom line? My Outlook Express doesn't crash. I've never lost a message (and I've had a few viruses in the past), and I have an extrememly large store of messages with over 20 folders.

Exchange is not a bear to administer. I admin 130 users. If you can call it that. Exchange pretty much runs itself. I've had less a half percent downtime in about a year.

I would call that a crash - but it doesn't happen to me (since Mark Lord's jiffies fix several months ago, and now Beta 13).

I haven't lost any email to Outlook either, but we are running Exchange. It works better than I had expected, with around 500 users and a vast volume of email (I have about 20,000 stored in exchange and I know I'm far from the most prolific user). The calendar system is invaluable - my previous experience was with Lotus Notes and the less said about that the better.

Rob

Even when (if?) my empeg crashes it's "unplug and plug and play" (Jeez I crack myself up!) With Windows its a minimum 5 minute bootup sequence, and you lose all your work...

"What exactly are you doing to make your empeg crash?"
Same thing as DiGNAN17... it's nothing a little pull and push doesn't fix, although I had to do it twice in a row last week.

I don't want to make it sound like my empeg is a problematic device. It's not, it's the best damn thing I have ever bought... my family still like to tease me about my "man-bag," but they all shut up when I ask them how many cd's they can fit in their purses...

But to continue my good luck streak, my empeg knob went all spinny on me last week and I think I've just realized I need that diode thing. I've just been too busy to ask...

Boy, that's not my experience. I've never run an Exchange server, but I've been in a number of companies where it's using many more man-hours than I think is appropriate. Maybe they're just incompetent admins.

Exchange can be a dream until it breaks. Once it breaks if you don't know what you are doing then you can burn an awful long time sorting it out. Even restoring from a simple backup can be a challenging task.

About 6 months ago, I restored the entire OS/Exchange..yada yada onto a brand new box. Just didn't restore the hardware registry. Exchange started right up fine.

I've never had such an easy email server to configure and maintain. Especially compared to Lotus Notes {{shiver}} ok, it's not that bad...yes it is..

I agree that Notes is a pain to set up, configure, and modify. But once it's up, it takes a nuclear catastrophe to bring it down again. Reliable as can be.

While I have no knowledge of Exchange, I use (and rely on) it daily. My co. has something like 10,000 UK Exchange/Outlook users each with a 100MB quota spread across (I believe) 8-10 servers.

I'd bet though that most of my colleagues would (if asked) complain bitterly about periodic outages, having to log out of Outlook for scheduled hardware work etc. I often (once/fortnight) arrive in the morning and unlock the Win2k console to find Outlook has hung only to find that I hadn't bothered to read the mail from IM telling me to logout the evening before because of scheduled maintenance.

In 5 years only on one occasion have I ever heard about people losing emails - a server failed (RAID controller I believe) and some people lost about 3-days of sent/received email, myself included.

I guess what I'm really trying to say here is that I believe I gain a lot of productivity from Exchange/Outlook with it's Calendar, meeting requests, task scheduler, document tracking etc. that I would find it hard to re-adjust to a life without it. Maybe there ARE better solutions out there but Exchange works sure well for me too

Thank you, but my best point is the one on the top of my head.