Is it only me, or........

"Ay up senior management change dudes, our existing MS exchange has fell on it's arse and even MS themselves don't seem to be able to make it work. What shall we do?"

"Upgrade to exchange 2003 approved"

DO WHAAT?

@Ben

"...Sky went down the right route by outsourcing it all to a company like Google - although the way the migration was handled obviously was pants....."

You really have no idea. No, really! None whatsoever. How could you? You wasn't there. But don't let that stop you being an expert in such matters.

Have you ever had to mass migrate over 1.2 million email accounts from one platform to another within 24 hours, one that is not even under your direct control and influence? Would you even know what tools (thats a laugh) that Google supplied Sky to use? Or would supply any other ISP or corporation trying to do the same? Do you even know the logistics of running an ISP's email platform, let alone migrating one?

Like any migration of this sort the Sky one was not without problems. But the fact that they successfully managed over 90% of accounts in the first run is a testament to how well it was achieved. The remaining 10% were comprised of what could loosely be described as "problem accounts", ones that would need significant manual intervention.

Not connected with Sky or Google in any way, but the information to how it was done is out there for those that want to know rather than just cast opinionated slurs.

IT? icon for the benefit of those that wouldn't know IT if it landed on their foot.

[/RANT]

>I'm not really sure how the EU would view this....

>I'm not really sure how the EU would view this....

it's not bundled INTO the OS. If you don't want it, don't install it. Or install a different web server. Windows Server OS's all come with IIS - should we complain about bundling that then - although you have to opt to install it? Your average distro comes with several options and a default setupthat works - usually Apache - cos it's secure, OS and just works, used to be Sendmail and fetchmail - your own secure, reliable email server inbuilt - IF you wanted it. If not, don't use it. so please DON'T compare it to Microsoft bungling - sorry - bundling IE and Media Player into Windows. It's NOT the same thing at all.

I'm with F9 (plus.net) and they use Squirrel. Very little spam (now they've fixed it), simple interface for webmail, reliiable, just works.

Oh no

They have problems so they are migrating to Windows 2003 Exchange. Oh man, that is a joke right. A company that puts men into space, and kicks butt in many markets uses Microsoft Exchange.

Ha hahahahahahahahahaha haahahahaha ahahah,

Kingston Communications - welcome to Monopoly-land

"As to other ISPs Kingston Communications operates a policy of selling their lines at market price not at a subsidised price as laid down by Parliament, a la BT, if other ISPs want o come in all they have to do is pay the market price for a line."

Presumably, by "market price" you mean "a price set high enough so that no-one else can compete with them" - after all, that's what's best for their profits. Last I heard, they even charged much more for broadband than their own out-of area ISP, let alone the competition.

"Alternately they can go for true open market competition and supply their own exchanges and lines, then see what they charge."

Aside from the fact that is probably totally unviable due to cost, I doubt any company would be allowed to do it in the first place. It's not exactly trivial to get permission to dig up the roads everywhere to lay cables.

Telewest - how we miss thee

I'm a long-standing Telewest/Virgin Media customer, and the service has just been going down and down for years. Telewest themselves were useless at the end. It all started, for me at least, around the time of the NTL merger. Probably no surprises there for anyone who was on NTHell before...

I even remember the days of Telewest using OWA for webmail, and all MS-hating, Linux-loving nonsense aside, OWA used to work perfectly quickly and perfectly well. I was working away at the time, and used it every day with no fuss whatsoever. These days, whenever I try to use webmail from work, it logs in fine, but then it claims to time out almost instantly whenever I try to open an email, or delete something, or move emails into folders... I'm not a fan, put it that way.

If the new MS Exchange software goes some way to fixing these issues and speeding up the download of email to my Outlook client at home, I'm all for it.

Maybe we could wait and see what the service is like before we all start complaining?

Oh... and it is of course also possible that the reason they have MS engineers in is because a support contract with MS is cheaper than having their own technical staff dealing with it, isn't it? Especially if it's bundled in with the MS software?

Goggles, to protect me from the enevitable flaming for suggesting we wait and see.

@AC re Kingston Communications

Nope, just because KC won't bend over like BT doesn't mean they are setting the rate at an uncompetitive level, that is illegal. Read your 2nd comment again, realise what you have written, then talk about being competitive. I don't hear these comments about areas where NTL/Telewest/VM have control through their cable supplies. People who preach about open markets then find a reason for their favourite product being subsidised make me sick. I am not prepared to pay higher phone / BB charges just so some other company can come in and cream off users.

As to the unrealistic claim, I became a KC subscriber because they expanded & invested in cables etc to my village so that they could sell me their product in fair competition to BT. Until your favourite BB ISP is willing to do the same they have no relevant comment to make.

Oh my

I can't believe some of the overwhelming crap being spouted off here, you all seem to think Exchange server is some sort of Office app. No doubt if VM's SQL servers had of gone down you'd be shouting how it should be MySQL. Well no it shouldn't, MS Exchange host some massive outfits and this one is no different and the comments about having a Linux solution that would get fixed sooner is the biggest joke of the lot.

Generally poor service availability for the last few months

It's not just the email that has gone down the toilet - coincidently all the problems seem to have started or gotten progressively worse since Virgin took over, but even generally browsing and network speed is now diabolical!

I've been a business user of TW broadband for 7 years and this is easily the worst service/availability I had during this time.