Using ENTOURAGEx instead of OUTLOOK2000 Exchange client - works great!

[warwick teale]

All, some good user news to pass on regarding ENTOURAGEX instead of 
OUTLOOK2000 Exchange client..

  I have x-posted to busmac and titanium lists because this is where I 
have seen the most anxiety, heartache and frustration with those of us 
who must use coporate emails systems services by MIcrosoft Exchange 
email servers WITH a VPN agent in between for travelling and home use 
(away from the office lan).

Well, I have been trying to get a clean and stable environment for this 
since I first started using OS/X back in late 2001 - and now I think I 
have.

I was so frustrated today that I finally turned to implementing 
Microsoft Entourage (from my Office X) to do basic access to my 
corporate email EXCHANGE server .. and guess what??

It works really well!

In fact OSX's mail.app works great too!

I did this using the IMAP connection to my company's many MS XCHG 5.5 
servers.

I have only basic READ, SEND and DELETE functions because of the limits 
of IMAP and SENDMAIL.

So I reckon that when MS get the ENTOURAGE update out for OUTLOOK 
EXCHANGE soon I will be in great shape! Then I might have calendar 
sharing and the stuff I used to have when I had dumped that horrid PC 
years back.

IF you are still reading, I have had no end of trouble with using 
OUTLOOK2001 in CLASSIC mode under OSX because I need to access my 
company's exchange server and internal firewalled network using a VPN 
router (cisco 3000).

As many of you users of outlook know, the many flavours of the CISCO 
VPNCLIENT from the first one I can remember called V2.5.1(??) has 
always been a bad marriage with he classic mode apps.. The most 
frustrating has been the usage of outlooks fully qualified exchange 
server name instead of an IP address (for general usage) and those 
annoying lockups when the network stops or worse the TI goes to sleep!

Anyway I can put up with people not dropping stuff into my busy OUTLOOK 
exchange calendar and a few other things in order to use ENTOURAGEx.

I hope MS bring out the UNLEADED version of ENTOURAGE for EXCHANGE 
server soon..

I do like the way I can use my address book.app and also the SONY PALM 
via hot synch too.. so life is looking better.

NOw I have my two iSIGHT cams and some uncongested broadband ..  life 
is getting better all the time!

IF anyone would like some detail on what I did to get this to work. I'd 
be happy to share it.

  it is pretty straight forward and there is no need to bother the 
"helpdesk experts" system admins who live and breathe windows to get it 
to work. (thankfully!)

NO I don't have to bugger about starting OS( and all the 
witchcraft/black magic and bad Feng Shui ( hosts files and different 
DSN's  etc etc) & I seem to have to do with resetting MTU's for the 
classic mode and all the stuff .. I can get emails in less than 30 
seconds once VPN is up under 10.2.6

Oh.. lastly.. do I use OWA to get emails too? Well yes.. but that seems 
to have so many usage restritions under the OS/X environment... I gave 
up. Still have to use VPN outside of my corp. lan.

w