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I think your post underscores a lot of the frustration that people feel. What can you do?
Probably nothing.
It's as if your company's policy is to have a night watchman who invites his friends over at night to go through your desk and try to trash your stuff and see what they can embarrass you with.
Since the PHB's are incapable of seeing that this is a bad idea, you are forced to live with it, by not keeping anything personal in your desk and keeping important files backed up and encrypted.
If Microsoft would publish a protocol for connecting to Exchange servers, this problem and all its waste would _vanish_ as other clients emerge.
POP 3 is a pretty good standard in that it lets users use any mail client that they like to get their mail.
I use Sylpheed for Linux - I could just as easily use Outlook Express or Netscape or whatever...
All you can do at your company is to be as careful as you can in protecting your files and be ready to explain the alternatives to anyone who is starting to realize that Outlook is a Bad Idea.
In the mean time, well, hang in there.

Cheers,
Jim

MMDC Mobile Media

My bad. I really thought Smart Tags in the beta version of IE6 pointed to sport results and stock quotes on MSNBC, or something like that.

I didn't remember that STs were also disabled by default either, and that's a good point. Still, as another slashdotter remarked, even if disabled, you never know if the system won't sooner or later pop up a window suggesting you enable that "new exciting feature" or something, so that Joe Doe turns it on on his own. I can't see why they would make the meta-tag work on an opt-out basis if they don't specifically intend STs to be used by default. Maybe they're being stupid, or frighteningly arrogant, and not just evil, alright, but I'm not going to trust them like that. They kind of... have been known not to mind excessively aggressive practices, shall I say. :)

Oh -- as for email clients (-1; Offtopic), since security sounds like an important feature to me *g* I personally use either mutt, Netscape, which is not good at all (but my experience of it kind of makes up for it, or so I dare hope :)), or sometimes Sylpheed, but many guys at my (CS) school ended up choosing The Bat! and are very happy with it. Not anywhere as versatile as good old mutt, of course, but text-based things can be somewhat arid, alright. I've used Outlook on a couple of occasions, and just can't stand it, it's moronic design security-wise and its "I'm dumbed down client aimed at lowest-common-denominator masses" feel. Different tastes, I suppose.

-- B.