From: Joe Niski <niski@ssd.intel.com>
Subject: Re: QuickMail vs Microsoft Mail
X-Xxdate: Wed, 23 Dec 92 13:26:50 GMT
Organization: Intel Supercomputer Systems Division
X-Useragent: Nuntius v1.1.1d11
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 21:27:15 GMT

In article <BzD5n2.FH1@eis.calstate.edu> Tom Nakada,
tnakada@eis.calstate.edu writes:
>wlopez@vitalink.com (WLopez) writes:
>> 
>> We are considering purchasing Microsoft Mail for our PC community but
would 
>> like to be able to exchange mail with our Mac community who are
already on 
>> QuickMail.
>> 
>> I would like to know from all of you who may have already gone through
this 
>> scenario, the pros and cons.
>> 
>> I have heard that to do the above scenario, it would require a "dual" 
>> gateway.  On the Mac side I would need StarNine's MailLink to MHS and
on the 
>> PC side I would need PC Mail gateway to MHS, running Novell.
>> 
>> comments........
>> 
>> comments on document exchange..........?
>> 
>> or should we just go to Microsoft Mail for the Macs?
>> 
>> any/all comments are greatly appreciated!
>> 
>> Thanks in advance!
>> 
>> WLopez
>> wlopez@vitalink.com
>
>MacWeek just gave Lotus's cc:Mail 2.0 thier "Diamond" Award for (in their
>opinion) "best cross-platform mail".
>
>"cc:Mail is not fast, it needs some client tweaking, and its RAM
>requirements (in the neighborhood of 1MB) can be a mojor obstacle. But in
>many cases it has better features, a better interface and a better basic
>structure than competing E-mail packages. A Mac cc:Mail remote client is
>in the works, so the major missing components in cc:Mail's line are the
>numerous gateways that QuickMail enjoys. If your priority is delivering
>reliable E-mail to everyone's desk, however, cc:Mail 2.0 is the one to
>look at first." 
>
>- MacWeek 12.14.92 pg.65 (reviewed 08.03.93)

i've administered both MS Mail and QuickMail on the Mac, and no work in
an environment where a few Macs need to exchange mail with unix and
ccMail on the PC.

my ruthless opinions:
QuickMail is a dog (last version i dealt with was 2.2.7, i beleive),
ESPECIALLY ITS USER INTERFACE - getting mail addressed to external
systems is a nightmare no user should be subjected to (see John Norstad's
article from >1year ago re: QM vs. Eudora). For a large system, you often
need to patch the Finder to increase the max # of open files. Mail gets
corrupted often, in my experience. Last time i used it, you had to run
the administrator program on the mail server itself if you have a gateway
installed, and the software was incompatible with Timbuktu.

ccMail/Macintosh is a dog. Too much of a resource hog (1200K of ram
minimum), very slow on both my IIci & an office-mate's Quadra 700, and
the Notify control panel seems to crash many Macs (though that might be
due to the fact that our ccMail PO is on a Netware server). DOES NOT WORK
OVER ARA! Well, it sort-of works, but is too damned slow to be useful.
Mac file enclosures going through its SMTP gateway get mangled beyond all
recognition. The remote version was supposed to ship last summer, but i
ain't seen it yet - the show-floor demos at MacTivity last July crashed
continualy. A rich administrative-feature-set, but seems to require too
much human intervention.

MS Mail/Mac is compact, easy to administer, comes with a nifty
auto-backup Control Panel, & i've only seen a corrupted mail file once.
Older versions work fine over AppleTalk Remote, the new version allows
you to disconnect from the network & work off-line.  The Mac client for
PC-based MSMail is an application rather than a DA, requires a network OS
that allows Mac users to mount the volume holding the PO - haven't used
it, so don't really know much. Actually, i think PCs can be clients of a
Mac MSMail server, too.

Right now, we're using StarNine's MSMail<->smtp gateway to get to ccMail
on the PCs (via ccMail's smtp gateway), and that seems to work, right
down to file enclosures.
---------------------------------------------
Joe Niski                                          niski@ssd.intel.com
Macintosh Network Admin.
Intel Supercomputer Systems Division
Beaverton, OR USA
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.comm