Not sure of this is the most appropriate place to put this message, so apologies if it's not.
I just wanted to offer a word of congratulations to the development team of SME Server. This product is probably the closest I've ever got to adopting Open Source in my business. Every time I need to replace a MS server product, I take a couple of weeks to check out OS alternatives. It's probably fair to say there has never really been anything that works "out of the box" in the way the the MS stuff does. I've always used the Small Business Server products after our first NT3.5 with MS Mail, SBS4.5, SBS2000, and next week, SBS2003 is going in.
It's fair to say I've always been
really bugged by the price of the add-ons - why should I have to pay 500 pounds a year to fight against viruses that aren't my fault?
Why must I be shafted just to add another ten users?
There has never been a realistic SBS alternative. ie, something I can install easily and then turn to an easy GUI/Webmin to do everything else, without having to go near a command line. But you guys look like you've pretty much cracked it, and I offer my hearty congratulations to
everyone involved.
I'll not be adopting this time round, but I admit the i-bay feature
alone made it a really close-run contest. On this occasion, it was the fat client ability for calendaring. Kronolith just didn't want to play reliably with Sunbird on the PCs and iCal on the Macs. Ditto eGroupware. These are must-have applications for me, and they have to
just work. A calendar failing to publish, failing to share nicely, or failing in anyway is just not an option.
I'll be back in two or three years for another look. In the meantime thank you for the first truly pleasurable experience I've had of open source server platforms. I enjoyed the tinkering for a couple of weekends, but I really should use the time to earn a living.
I might just leave 7.3 on the old server, and in quieter moments have another play.
Well done everyone, it's great to see a project really understanding what small and medium sized business actually want.
With best regards,
Graham