Help me avoid Exchange

[Travis Roy]

> It'll become his problem when the server gets owned and he loses a
> week of e-mail.  I'd say do the prep work now so if they do pull the
> trigger on your idea, implementation isn't that hard.

This can happen regardless of the mail server. It's up to the system 
admins to keep the servers locked down. The only problems we ever had 
with exchange at the few companies I worked for were viruses being 
spread. This was due to stupid user error rather then the server.

> 1)  Why use exchange?  No really.  If all you want is an IMAP server,
> what is the reason for using Exchange?

Because others in the company want exchange only features and they want 
to centralize to one server.

> 2)  What is the cost/benefit analysis?  Exchange isn't free, nor are
> some of the backup applications you use to back up it's database, nor is
> the maintenance time required to keep a Windows box up and patched.
> Assume hardware costs are constant (same box running the IMAP server)
> and then calculate from there - how much to back up the data, how much
> maintenance required, how long to create/remove users.

This is the biggest downfall for Exchange, the cost. If you're going to 
win on anything, it's going to be this.