Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

GMail for Domains vs. MS Live Office?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the give-your-own-review dept.

utlemming asks: "With the announcement of GMail for Domains and Microsoft Live Office, both in beta, business users will soon have a choice in hosted email solutions and my organization was lucky enough to be selected for both beta programs. Seeing major differences between the two in terms of usability, ease to setup and features, I have written this a review of both products based on my testing. This leads me to my question: what experiences have you had with GMail for Domains and Microsoft Live Office, and how have they worked with your organization?"

7 of 46 comments (clear)

  1. Lack of corporate paranoia? by RingDev · · Score: 3, Interesting

    With all the news lately with emails and documents being used for all sorts of legal proceedings, and the ability of the government to subpoena service providers, do companies really want to outsource such a huge chunk of liability?

    -Rick

    --
    "Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
    1. Re:Lack of corporate paranoia? by moochfish · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If someone wanted to subpena your emails, it'll be the difference between your company defending itself or Google doing it for you. Either way, if a court says hand 'em over, your emails are out of your control. Google doesn't want to hand over its clients emails because it hurts its image and lowers consumer trust. So I will go out on a limb here and say Google is probably going to defend the privacy of your emails as rigorously as your company would.

    2. Re:Lack of corporate paranoia? by booch · · Score: 2, Informative

      If you delete your emails after you receive a subpoena, you should go to jail. That's destroying evidence, and if you get caught, you probably WILL go to jail.

      The trick a lot of companies do is to delete email BEFORE they get a subpoena. It's questionable if you know a subpoena is coming. So the new thing is to set a policy where all email must be deleted after 90 days or something. Plausible deniability. This is something that can generally be enforced if you handle your own email. If you have Google handle it, it's hard to be sure that they've really deleted it when you hit the delete button.

      --
      Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
  2. Re:Fuck. My Eyes! by apollosfire · · Score: 2, Funny

    Fuck My Eyes!

    ..I'd rather not.

  3. This is what passes for a review? by pythas · · Score: 3, Insightful

    OMG M$ SUX THIS IS TERRIBLE I CAN'T EVEN FIGUrE OUT HOW TO LOGIN.

    OH GOOGLE I LOVE YOU HAVE MY BABY.

    I've saved the rest of you the trouble of reading all the way through this trash.

  4. A few points by sethadam1 · · Score: 3, Informative

    I have beta tested both of these as well, and let me correct a few things here:

    1. This is BS. I am on a Mac, and my domain is administered while I'm in Camino. I'm logged in right now, the URL is https://domains.live.com/Manage/managedomains.aspx and it works just fine.

    2. I have used Google's domain hosting as well, and it's nice, but it's very minimalistic at this point. It is cool that you can change the Gmail logo to your company's logo though.

    As for users signing in, yes, they do have to sign in via hotmail. It says so RIGHT IN THE ADMIN AREA. This guy couldn't find the big text on the left side that says "Users may access their email accounts by signing in to http://www.hotmail.com./"

    WEAK. This review needs to be nixed. No digg.

    1. Re:A few points by sethadam1 · · Score: 2, Informative

      And another point, you do NOT have to hand over control of your domain to Microsoft, unless you are a total numskull. You just add a regular old MX record as well as a TXT record for their SPF spam protection. You don't give them control of your domain, and you can still add as many still A records and CNAMEs as you want.

      This story is fraught with errors.