Basic Internal Instant Messaging Solution?

sk8dork asks: "I am pretty much _the_ internal IT person at the company I work for and I am recognizing the need for internal Instant Messaging more and more each day. While email is quick and easy to send, it's not always the quickest way to get your message to someone when they're not monitoring their inbox every second of the day. Having come from a position in Dell tech support I've experienced the MS communications solution but was put off by the instability of it and, now that I've looked into purchasing it, the steep price as well. For more stability we often used an internal IRC channel, but most people would either not login or they'd just be put off by its complexity. In this new company, where close to no one is 'computer savvy', I am in need of an Instant Messaging solution that is easy to use, secure, limited to our network, and inexpensive. I'd like to stay away from the mainstream IM clients such as Yahoo!, AIM, ICQ and others. We're running Windows Server 2003 for Small Business (sorry) and will be soon upgrading out of the SBE to regular Windows Server 2003. Any helpful information will be greatly appreciated."

Comments

Well, you could use

[Who235]

Net Send and find a gui?

The old-fashioned solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I use this novel instant communication technique called talking.

See I get up, or just raise my voice (depending on the situation) and talk to the person I want to have an instant communication with. It is pretty easy to have one-to-many instant messages, too.

It is nice in that this instant messaging technique continues to work even if the server or network goes down.

One the down side, it only works for short distances, but you can get the phone plug-in for longer distances. But with the phone plug-in it is tough to see if the person you want to send an instant message to is "on-line".

The other downside is you can't change your avatar (aka buddy icon), and I don't like the way mine looks. Some people try to hack this sometimes (Halloween for example) but it rarely looks right. You can get your avatar professional altered but that cost a lot of money.

Re:The old-fashioned solution

[iabervon]

Sure, it seems like a reliable solution. But it doesn't work when you need it the most, like when all the air has been sucked out of the office. What are you going to use then?

'...or they'd just be put off by its complexity.'

[Spamicles]

I'm frightened to live in a world where IRC is considered complex.

We use that all the time at my office

[ichigo 2.0]

File transfers are a bit slow though. Also, outsiders tend to get confused when I stand up and say: "Hey Mike, here's that file you wanted. 10101011101011010100010101010011010101010110101010 01010010101010101010101010010101110101010101101010 10101100101101010100101101011101010101101101001010 10101010010001010100101001010010100101011010101010 10100101111101010101110101010010101000001010101000 00101010010101000101010000000000000001101111111111 11010101010000000110010101010100101010010101001010 10010101010010101010010101010010101011010101010101 010010101".

Warn me next time!

[Anonymous Coward]

Warn me next time, I can't see sick shit like that while at work! >: (

10101011101011010100010101010011010101010110101010 01010010101010101010101010010101110101010101101010 10101100101101010100101101011101010101101101001010 10101010010001010100101001010010100101011010101010 10100101111101010101110101010010101000001010101000 00101010010101000101010000000000000001101111111111 11010101010000000110010101010100101010010101001010 10010101010010101010010101010010101011010101010101 010010101".

Re:Two words

[Anonymous Coward]

A collegue once got so fed up with his boss so he put a batch file together and stuck it in his boss's start up. The batch file contained one line: net send * CUNT!

He got found out as he was crying with laughter when two guys started a shouting match almost escalating to violence with his boss.