Re: AW: Good Mail Server for NT?

Dale E. Reed Jr. ( (no email) )
Wed, 28 May 1997 13:46:00 -0700

Peter A. Sang wrote:
>
> Hi Dale!
> Hmm, seems I disagree a little: could you please tell me the P.O version
> where you've found this problems, and the number of users/mailmessages
> you had on your system this time, and....? ;)

It wasn't my system. It was an Emerald customer with over 3,000 users
in it. External 12gb RAID disks. Post.Office was corrupting the
mail files. Other programs on the box (including a backup SQL Server
replicating the Emerald database on the SAME array) worked flawless.
NT 4.0, SP2, etc. This was re-producable on other machine with
a couple of gigs storage (not as high powered) when they were desperate
to see if it worked. Mail flow was pretty good, but not spam volume. :)

> Anyway, the only thing _I_ can point out that I tried several mail
> servers before I came to post.office, and it has worked flawless on
> both our own and on several customers systems for over a year now.
> Post.Office is by far not the cheapest Mailserver, but I'm looking for
> an acceptable 'cost of ownership' where the purchase price is about
> 5-10% of this costs, not more. P.O. ISP deals are AFAIK ~995$ for 2.500
> users, do you think that's too much? I'd prefer paying more than being
> stuck with a software where the producer goes out of business because
> his revenue was too low !

Agreeded. Its not that Post.Office didn't work, its a great product and
we do use it here for many of our business users. We actually still
have
two 1.93 licenses available for sell from a while back if someone wants
to do the upgrade path. Probably make a good deal on them to get them
out of here as well (send mail to sales@iea.com). I still recommend
Post.Office to many of our customers. I don't believe in a specific
product for every customer, and recommend the product I think will work
the best.

> Concerning the 'anti-spam' feature there have been some very unfriendly
> posts from users because software.com refused to make a
> 'quick-and-dirty' fix: I fully understand that an Admin who is
> actually hit by SPAM gets upset, but in the current version (Post.office 3.1)
> they included a good _solution_ to the SPAM problem, not just a hack.
> Took them <3month, seems 'reasonable' to me :)
> Once again: P.O 3.1 is a software that's really worth a look!

And what if Microsoft would have taken 3 months to respond to the OOB
data bug? User's mail servers were being rendered USELESS by spam
attacks and all Software.Com could do was say "upgrade, give us more
money, and 3 months later we'll give you a solution?" Thats what got
under my skin. How many Emerald customers would we loose if we had
that attitude? Probably as many as Software.Com did... :( Most
other mail servers had an update out w/in one month of hi-jacking
becoming popular and DID NOT charge for the "update".

> Dale, since you are the 'authority' of this mailing list i think you
> should be careful what you say here, since it's always like the word of
> God :) About 6 month ago you strongly recommended P.O, now
> _your_opinion_ has changed. Usually not a problem, but P.O is product
> with a large installed user base, also for ISPs that use your Emerald
> software.

I am the moderator of this list, not the "authority". That means I
oversee the operations. I am a *MEMBER* of this list, just like any one
else. Software.Com is on this like, just like many other large
companies
such as Internet-Shopper, Microsoft, Intel, Livingston, Ascend,
and countless other people. They have posted opinions and information
as well. My word is not like God, its *MY* opinion. Period. It should
be
weighed just like other opinions. This is an un-moderted list so that
OTHER peoples opinions can be posted as well.

6 months ago, Software.Com had a good reputation and was working with
their customers (us being one of them). I am not one of those people
who
stick with their choice they made six months ago, if something changes
to
alter my choice. Something HAS changed, and I altered my choice. Its
hard to recommend to Emerald customers a Product where the company is
continually changing licensing. Thats another stickler. IMHO, they
should have come out with a Post.Office Enterprise (or some such) and
left Post.Office standard the way it was. Give more features to
the Enterprise server and less to the standard. Price them different
and then people can CHOOSE, whether to pay more for the options or
not).

> What I'd like to see is that you continue your previously good support
> for P.O, especially by adding an external authentication DLL like you
> made it for NTmail. If you see problems in getting the required
> information from software.com, drop me a note and I'll see what I can
> do.

The only problem I see is getting source code for Post.Office! I can't
majically make things work with Post.Office, like External
authentication,
if Post.Office DOES NOT have that facility. Sync was the only option at
the time, and AFAIK still is the only option. NTMail natively had
suport
for External Authentication, and in the next release will have native
support for SQL Server for almost everything. This is a step in the
right direction, rather than "improving registry speed 5 times over"
like
Software.Com did in their statement that they are more "scaleable now"
in the Post.Office 3.0 release. The registry is NOT scaleable and
anytime
those two words are used in the same sentence, I can't take the sentence
seriously.

If Post.Office 3.0 does have external auth capabilities, PLEASE point it
out to me, and I'll gladly start working on it.

-- Dale E. Reed Jr.  (daler@iea.com)_________________________________________________________________       IEA Software, Inc.      |  RadiusNT, Emerald, and NT FAQs Internet Solutions for Today  |    http://www.emerald.iea.com