kessler@schof.colorado.edu (Andrew Kessler) (02/01/90)
I'm thinking seriously about installing Quickmail here for the faculty and staff. I would like to hear from some people who are using it and what some of the known problems/bugs are? Are you happy with it? I eventually want to use Gatormail to connect to the internet. Is anyone doing that? What is the mail addressing like? Does that work well? Thank you, Andrew Kessler kessler@schof.colorado.edu
lewis@bevsun.bev.lbl.gov (Steve Lewis) (02/04/90)
Here at LBL we have about 50 K-boxes supporting almost 1000 Macs, all linked on the common Ethernet. Approximately 300 of the Macs use QuickMail. The particular mail-center I am part of has 75 users. We are now beta-testing version 2.2. This is an excellent product. Not only do the Mac hackers such as myself use it and like it, but our scientists, administrators, technicians, financial types, and clerical people find it easy to learn and use. We get excellent response from the vendor, and it is very reasonably priced: the original version 1.0 was available on the street for about $16 per Mac. The lastest version should be about twice that, but still worth it. By the way, we also are testing the QuickMail-to-Unix bridge from StarNine. We have had only one real problem with that, which is being fixed even as I speak: when the destination mail center for QuickMail-bound mail was down, the bridge machine would accept the mail from Unix, thereby freeing the Unix system from any responsibility for retrying or reporting a non-delivery, however, the bridge would then drop the mail. But when working, it is quite powerful to find every Mac in the institution is connected to the Internet, not to mention all the more distantly bridged networks such as Bitnet, and so forth--with no compromise to the user interface. Steve Lewis, Project Leader SALewis@LBL.gov Bevalac Controls Group Mail Stop 64-121 Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory 415/486-5831 Berkeley, CA 94720 -- Steve Lewis, Project Leader SALewis@LBL.gov Bevalac Controls Group Mail Stop 64-121 Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory 415/486-5831 Berkeley, CA 94720
medin@cincsac.arc.nasa.gov (Milo S. Medin) (02/11/90)
Be careful here. The mail relay to SMTP has got to work right. If it's flaky, then your Mac users are cut off from the rest of the world. Also, make sure the relay supports not just the DNS for A record resolvement, but also does the right thing with MX records. It's got to be a good Internet citizen. We've been playing with the software here at Ames, and have been very dissappointed with the reliability and functionality of the relays we've tried. The users (esp. management types) love it. We engineering types hate it. Why? Because the mail relay is slow or unreliable. It's got to work right or it's worthless. I should point out that the experience I'm quoting is that of our own group. I can't speak for the other groups playing with it here. Before you give up getting your managers to use real machines, make sure there is a viable alternative. If mail isn't reliable, it's not worth using. Thanks, Milo