Microsoft looking at mail client for UNIX

Eater writes "Here's an article from Federal Computer Week. Seems they're afraid of losing Army dollars. " The Army is using Lotus Notes, because of "security concerns" with Exchange. Looks like military intelligence may not be such a misnomer.

Comments

Allright...

[IntlHarvester]

There is about 50 posts here guffawing at Microsoft's crappy software and poor unix ports. Har Har.

But is there even one Unix mail program (commercial or otherwise) that comes even close to the user-level functionality of MS Outlook? And before anyone nominates KMail or Netscape Messenger, try using both side-by-side!

(Admittedly Outlook is a 30 MB install, but where I come from, mail is the #1 application by far. Of course, the PST format can go hairy, but again, so can Netscape's mail database.)

--

Re:Have they all gone mad?

[dcs]

75% of message arriving? Notes mailing is much more reliable than standard internet mail, thanks to it's powerful DSN capabilities, to which smtp cannot yet compare to, even if one was garanteed to have them.

No biff? No .forward? You have never ever SEEN it, have you? Notes mail is database-based, it's routing done through highly programmable database merging, and all system is programmable. Notes mail system is actually a Notes application, in fact.

I prefer SMTP, but don't spread FUD. You know nothing about Notes.

Good FUD quote

[anticypher]

Here's my favorite:

the company provides highly reliable security "out of the box.... Policywise, you have to make sure you configure it correctly."

A group I work with for setting up some secure systems recently invited micros~1 to send some experts to set up a system with proper security. There was a rather large contract riding on this bid, and as near as we can tell micros~1 DID send their most knowledgable engineers. But after three days of configuration and re-configuration, we could break the box with any of a dozen script-kiddie exploits, and with several custom made attacks.

The micros~1 experts finally went away muttering a few feeble excuses. Only one seemed genuinely embarassed, the others 'just didnt get it'.

So the bid going to the customer will be almost entirely unix based, and only a handful of M$ machines to cover a specific need in the contract. The account team from micros~1 are crying themselves blue right now, since it was going to be their quota for the year. Either way, I get paid :-)

The AntiCypher