Traveling Laptops, Exchange 2000, and Multiple Profiles?

PDiddy asks: "Working for a corporation which uses Exchange 2000, I have run into countless traveling users with laptops that have complaints about how their mail is received from the outside vs. inside. Most of these users have a 56k or less dialup when on the road, so having them connect with an Exchange profile is incredibly slow, even with 'Offline Folders' enabled. The second option is to have two profiles. One for Exchange (Inside), and have it default to delivering to a PST. The second profile (Outside) be setup for POP and set it to the same PST. On the surface, this solution looks great to the user, but the ability to nightly backup the mail on the exchange server is removed. The third option would be to have a combination of the two approaches, the difference being the exchange profile (Inside), would leave the mail on the server, but then you have users complaining about having to sort through their new mail twice. What I need is a good, all around solution. Perhaps their are some third-party plugins for outlook I am unaware of to create a new solution? Also, are their any recommended methods for accessing an Exchange global address book over a very slow connection, or, perhaps syncing updates to laptop while connected so it can be used on the road? Currently, if you export that address book, it will set the email addresses to X.400, which will not work from a POP profile."

Comments

Wait for Office 11

[km790816]

From an article at PCMag:

"a massive overhaul in Outlook that makes messages easier to read and manage and lets users switch between online and offline modes without restarting."

from a MS PressPass article site:

"Also, because information workers aren't always working online or from the office, Outlook includes an improved mobile e-mail experience that is more consistent across the range of today's networks and data connections. By introducing a new cached e-mail system and intelligent connection settings, Outlook allows mobile workers to get to their e-mail more quickly and transfer between data connections with little or no interruption."

Re:Well, you could switch to Lotus Notes....

[shyster]

Yeah, Lotus Notes is unbearably slow and UI-deficient ON the LAN, so your users won't even notice the difference over dial-up!