[SoCoSA/discuss] Outlook+Mac compatible group calendar?

[Steve S.]

Eric,

Thanks for your reply!

On 11/15/06, Eric T. Landerville <eric at landerville.com> wrote:

> I don't know what you mean by 'high end', but I am thinking that it
> functionality rather then cost.

That mix of broad functionality (and consequent complexity & expense)
that is typical of what modern marketspeak usually calls "enterprise"
software.  Yeah, it's a bit vague, but I'm betting you can tell pretty
much what I'm talking about.

We have neither the time-budget nor the financial budget for a "high
end" solution...


> You might want to look at Microsoft's
> Small Business server.  It has a scaled down version of Exchange plus
> scaled down versions of most of Microsoft's server software, that I
> believe will do what you want.

Hmmm.  Exchange has a bit of a rep as being a bear for administrators.

I'm doing most everything IT right now.  Our email server currently
needs about 1 hour / month to administer, and that just for users who
hit quota & need spankings and/or quota-enlargements.  The thing is
rock-solid... an "appliance:"   turn it on, and it starts serving
e-mail.


> The cost is around $499 for 10 client or
> $999 for unlimited, this was just a quick search and I am sure you could
> find it for cheaper.

I'll look into this.  Right now, as I mention, moving off our existing
server (Communigate Pro) would be a really, REALLY hard sell
in-house...


> You might also want to look at the licensing
> setup, with 'regular' Server 2003 if you run the 2000/XP on the
> workstation they come automatically with a Client Access License (CAL)
> so you might only need licenses for your MAC and Linux clients.

We have MS-Office on every (Windows) desktop, so Outlook is included.
No Linux clients -- at least not yet -- though Thunderbird/Sunbird app's may
creep in.


>  If you
> are looking for something free (as in free beer) I can't think of
> anything with that functionality that you require.

Scalix looks free-beer attractive -- very attractive, in fact! -- but
(sado-necro-equinally) I'm not really likely to get a thumbs-up to
bring in a solution based on a different mailserver; outlook
calendar-functions would have to be implemented as a separate servlet,
leaving the mailserver largely un-touched.


- Steve