intra-office e-mail application

[tallguy804]

Because of the wonderful hurricanes I have to setup some temporary fixes in some sites in Florida. I have been asked to provide Intra-office e-mail for one of our sites. I don't want to go through the expense of MS Exchange because as I said this is just going to be temporary.

Anyone have any suggestions on applications that may fit this situation?

Thanks

 

[Byteman]

Hi, I sympathize....must be a mess down there.

I am not clear about a few things- do you mean actual over the Internet email, or perhaps a messaging app between networked pc's? Or, a full featured program that includes network support?
Are large files going to be sent over the Internet? How secure do you need to be?

Just for the sake of accuracy here, by intra-office do you mean buildings that are in different locations, or offices in the same general building?

How many pc's are going to have to actually send and receive whichever, and are there any servers involved, routers or switches, and what type of ISP is being used?

 

[tallguy804]

sorry for not being clear.. it has just been a long 3 weeks.

I need users in the same building to be able to e-mail each other. No ISP involved. I want it all in house. There is a server. A Dell 2600 poweredge with plenty of room on the drives and 1 gig of memory.

All the users are connected to a LAN so no wiring concerns. We have lost our ISP connection but i want the people in the building to be able to e-mail each other.

Any help you can provide would be great.

Thanks in advance

 

[Byteman]

hi, Just a quick note: NEVER post a valid email address in a forum--your email will be stuffed with spam. I have copied down the email address and if you have email enabled as part of the TechSupportGuys features, you will get an email notification each time someone replies to your thread.... we only work that way, here in posts, though you might find someone will email you help from time to time, or Private message you through the forum (your user profile) So, you can be reached if you have one or both of those enabled...but you should Edit your post and take out your email address. (I checked your profile, and you do have email and private messages enabled...so anyone may get in touch with you at the email address you registered with or Private message you. no need for any email address to be posted "in public".

 

[tallguy804]

Thanks.... Done.

I appriciate the helpful hint.

 

[Byteman]

Hi, Email is one thing, file sharing in house is another.
You should consider whether later on....the company/building will be regaining Internet access, and want to use a program for BOTH in-house and Internet mail/messaging. That is doable, but those cost a bit more, naturally. Security over the Internet is important...and indeed it can be in-house unless this place is a small, tightly unified, and secure already. You may actually want only an offline, in-house mail messaging program, commonly known as a popup...something like Windows Messenger, just a chat client? That comes installed in winXP...and there are many programs like it available, some free. I don't know if file support is included, but in some sharewares it is, as you see.

Lots of these program log all messages- so users might be able to read all messages in/out on any machine.

Email is over the Internet, so if your connection to an ISP is dead, you cannot use Internet email. However there are lots of solutions.

If there are not too many individual computers, satellite service may still work- have you checked on that?
That WOULD be over the Internet...

If simple messaging back and forth is all you need, and all computers are able to "talk" to each other, you can just type text files and send them to the right computer.

How many individual machines are there going at any given time?

And, is there a mix of operating systems or by any chance are all running winXP or win2000?

Here is one ($99) that will support one server and 20 clients:

http://www.boomerangsoftware.com/Corporate/NewsCorp/SSTEnterprise/SSTEnInfo1.htm

Pegasus Mail, will work either LAN or Internet:
http://www.pmail.com/overviews.htm

Here is RealPopup...sends files, chat, lots of features and free!

http://www.realpopup.it/faq.html

Here's Snapmail much less cost and looks like more what you have in mind....they also have SnapTalk

http://www.softpedia.com/public/cat/10/4/2/10-4-2-41.shtml

Here is a whole bunch of LAN message clients:

http://www.softpedia.com/public/cat/10/4/2/

http://www.downlinx.com/lists/71/5.htm

Here is a pageful of both kinds: Internet and in house.

http://wantdbest.com/freebies/chattools.html



Will put some more in this post as I go along...
holler if that's enough

 

[tallguy804]

Thanks. The ISP will be reconnected. I just don't know when. i don't want to install a messanger system. No need for that. I just want them to be able to email each other. It looks like there are a couple of solution in the links that you provided that might work. I will have to look into them.

All the machines will be Windows XP. The server will be windows Server 2003. There are 60 end users so whatever solution I use it will have to be able to support that many clients.

Thanks again for all the great info.