--- TIC-TECH message:
I've had an oppertunity to work with the new seattleschools.org, Exchange
accounts and here is what I've found.
First of all, there are two types of accounts for two types of people. The
Admin and building Office staffs (VAX users) will be using the full Outlook
program and their access is through one URL address. The teachers will be
using OWA and their access is through another URL address. I do agree with
this but possibly not for the same reasons that the district uses.
Teachers can access their district e-mail from any computer in the world
with a Web Browser. They do NOT have to do any configuring of the web
browser. They just point it to the correct URL and login to the system.
If they move from computer to computer, their e-mail is always there until
they delete it. As soon as they close the Web Browser, there is no part of
their e-mail left on the computer that they were on. So, ease of use and
security are very good. (Too bad OWA is somewhat slow). And, it is easy
to attach files and deal with attached files. These you can download to
your computer if you wish and they still work in whatever app created them.
For the Admins and office staff, Outlook brings their e-mail down to their
computer. But, their computers are more secure so this isn't usually a
problem. Outlook is faster than OWA, harder to logon to, but a bit easier
to use. With OWA, you have to ask the system to check for new e-mails.
With Outlook, new messages pop up automatically, much as they are used to
on the old VAX e-mail system.
What are these two new systems NOT? They are not like other Web e-mail
systems like Outlook Express, Netscape and Internet Explorer e-mail
systems. It is NOT a POP3 or the other one server system. You can NOT
configure it that way. It isn't that the people up town won't support
anything but OWA or the full Outlook system, they can't. The Client/Server
system that they are running just can't work with our old setups. It is
possible to setup Outlook Express to read your e-mail, but not to send it.
So, anyway, I've banged my head against trying to use the old ways of
accessing an e-mail system and now that I have succeeded with both OWA and
Outlook and I can understand why the old ways didn't (couldn't) work.
-Wes
wfelty@gte.net
- End TIC-TECH message. To join, leave, or visit
the message archive, go to Tic-Tech on the Web:
http://fp.seattleschools.org/fpclass/tic-tech/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Jan 24 2001 - 19:47:39 PST