Not where I work

Post #194,398 by bluke 2/13/05 12:55:22 AM Reply	Not where I work I work for a big company with dedicated admins and we find many times the the same conference is double booked and everyone is booking it on the resource calendar.
Post #194,401 by pwhysall 2/13/05 4:16:11 AM Reply	Shrug Y'all need to install Exchange proper, then. Works Here and Works All The Time. I've never, not once, seen Exchange screw up an appointment. It's got disaster recovery procedures from hell, performance issues out the wazoo, and a licensing scheme that Don Corleone would be proud of, but it does actually get appointments right. And anyway, my anecdotal evidence > your anecdotal evidence cuz I spent five and a bit years looking after this crap and getting to know it rather better than I'd have hoped. Peter [link\|http://www.ubuntulinux.org\|Ubuntu Linux] [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal] [link\|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org\|Home] Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
Post #194,405 by Another Scott 2/13/05 8:21:11 AM Reply	I hear a business opportunity calling you. :-)
Post #194,406 by pwhysall 2/13/05 8:24:54 AM Reply	Never, ever again :-) The torment of administrating Exchange is something I don't wish to re-visit in this lifetime. Peter [link\|http://www.ubuntulinux.org\|Ubuntu Linux] [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal] [link\|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org\|Home] Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
Post #194,425 by broomberg 2/13/05 11:08:29 AM Reply	That really says it all The torment of administrating Exchange is something I don't wish to re-visit in this lifetime. I call bullshit on everything else you said concerning it getting something right. Anything right! Again and again you state about the horrible pieces, and the reasons you would never go back to dealing with it. Yet you also state a particular piece simply works, and it is the fault of the people who installed it, the way it was installed, etc. WHICH IS THE STANDARD EXCUSE OF ANYONE DEFENDING A BIT OF MS CRAP! Let me state it a different way: You adminned something for years, you got to know its ins and outs. It was your baby. Of course it worked, you spent blood sweat and tears on it. BUT YOU NEVER WOULD WANT TO DO IT AGAIN! Which means, there was a time in your life that it was worth it to suffer, and as far as you are concerned, anyone who has a mis-behaving calendar simply hasn't suffered enough. Which in turn tells me you fell into a bit of Stockholm Syndrome with this particular package.
Post #194,431 by pwhysall 2/13/05 11:45:33 AM Reply	Re: That really says it all I call bullshit on everything else you said concerning it getting something right. Why? It does. Again and again you state about the horrible pieces, and the reasons you would never go back to dealing with it. Yes, because things are never all perfect or all crap. Yet you also state a particular piece simply works, and it is the fault of the people who installed it, the way it was installed, etc. Yes. And? WHICH IS THE STANDARD EXCUSE OF ANYONE DEFENDING A BIT OF MS CRAP! Whatever. Show me an alternative to Exchange that has a client that isn't Groupwise. I worked with an Exchange setup for 5 years that worked as advertised. It was a horrible thing to manage, and if it broke it was hell on earth to fix, but when it was up and running, it was working. Properly. You adminned something for years, you got to know its ins and outs. It was your baby. Of course it worked, you spent blood sweat and tears on it. Not really; We followed the instructions; when installed properly, it works. surprise And it was hardly my "baby". Remember, for most people, work is just that; work. I wouldn't do Exchange if I wasn't paid for it. BUT YOU NEVER WOULD WANT TO DO IT AGAIN! I would never want to do that, or any other sysadmin task again. It's a crappy job with little to no reward, it earns the derision and ire of your colleagues, and there's no end product to show for it. My current role is only about a hundred times more rewarding than that, if only a little more lucrative. Which means, there was a time in your life that it was worth it to suffer, and as far as you are concerned, anyone who has a mis-behaving calendar simply hasn't suffered enough. And that's just nonsense, Barry. I connect to an Exchange server every day, at work; dozens of meetings a day are scheduled with it; it doesn't foul up. That doesn't make it perfect, and I've been at pains in this thread to point that out. However, the rotten, stinking, awful, horrible truth is that there is no real alternative in that space to Exchange. Well, there is; it's Groupwise, which is just as horrible but in different ways. Both are lock-in closed-source payware EVUL. Which in turn tells me you fell into a bit of Stockholm Syndrome with this particular package. No, it means I don't have the "OMFG MICRO$HAFT SUXXORS" attitude that some people seem to have. Exchange is a dreadful thing; it uses a variant of the MS-SQL engine to store the mail and as a result ends up (as at 5.5) implementing a subset of AD to do the security, it's horrible to manage (one edits a string registry key to add a disclaimer to outgoing mail. In RTF. Not fun), it's slow, it's fragile, it's non-standards-compliant, it's a resource hog. All that, and it works, too. Peter [link\|http://www.ubuntulinux.org\|Ubuntu Linux] [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal] [link\|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org\|Home] Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
Post #194,434 by broomberg 2/13/05 12:47:32 PM Reply	Fragile Ok, the world of applications is not black and white, there are levels of issues / problems / amounts of crap that we are willing to put up with. Don't bother tossing out the "evul payware" red herring, I don't mind paying for software. I've got recurring licensing cost for things like Oracle, Syncsort, various MF<->Linux integration utilities,etc, and I consider them well worth it. There is no way that an individual who has experienced no problems with a individual application can dismiss other people experiencing problems. Just because your specific implementation worked does not means others will. Your: And anyway, my anecdotal evidence > your anecdotal evidence cuz I spent five and a bit years looking after this crap and getting to know it rather better than I'd have hoped. is just as meaningless. You weren't in OUR installations, seing OUR domain and ADS setup, dealing with OUR networks, our delegation schemes, our mailbags (what a horrible concept), our network issues, our (insert the next variable that MS Exchange seems to trip over), etc, etc, etc. You have a specific LACK of experience, and then you state that because YOU didn't experience it, other CAN'T experience it. That's just plain stupid. Sorry. It is. It certainly isn't logical. If your point is that Exchange is the best that is out there, at least for the business realities of the moment, I won't argue. It probably is, for now. That's life. But don't discount the pain involved in dealing with it. There is a tipping point, it may or may not be reached, we may or may not go to an alternative some day. But you defending the indefensable, ie: it is fragile, deal with it, makes you nothing more than an MS apologist. When you you wave off real problems, saying YOU never saw them therefor they don't happen, makes you someone to not to trust, someone with an agenda, someone who lives in the land of marketing, not reality. I hope I know you better than that, and that you really don't think that way, at least not usually. But maybe I don't, and you do.
Post #194,447 by pwhysall 2/13/05 2:36:08 PM Reply	We're talking past each other here. Box went from "our Exchange setup misbehaves" to "group calendaring in Office sux". THAT is what I was objecting to. The anti-MS zealotry is no better than the MS apologia (or the Linux apologia and pro-MS zealotry, come to that; the toast is buttered on both sides). Peter [link\|http://www.ubuntulinux.org\|Ubuntu Linux] [link\|http://www.kuro5hin.org\|There is no K5 Cabal] [link\|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org\|Home] Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
Post #194,456 by daemon 2/13/05 6:34:40 PM Reply	Oy you! our $shitta stinks and here $childprocShitta is why. Fair statement, and no I have not looked for alternatives as I have no impact on that side of the house. regards, daemon I love her dearly, far beyond any creature I've ever known, and I can prove it, for never once in almost seventy years of married life have I taken her by the throat. Mind you, it's been a near thing once or twice. George Macdonald Frasier Clearwater highschool marching band [link\|http://www.chstornadoband.org/\|http://www.chstornadoband.org/]
Post #194,498 by ben_tilly 2/13/05 11:49:14 PM Reply	Peter, that's BS and you should know it You have had 3 separate reports of Exchange being borked in the same way, and in at least 2 cases knowledge that it was being escalated as far as the company knew how. (In at least one case, Microsoft tried to figure it out and failed.) But you're saying that what is described can't be happening because it didn't happen to you when you did things properly. BS. What this means to me is that there is some bug in Exchange that under some circumstances causes double-booking to become a real issue. You didn't encounter that. Fine. I believe you. All that that means is that you didn't encounter that. You have no idea what triggers the misbehaviour, or whether you could solve it if it happened to you. You have no idea whether your avoiding it was due to some step you did right that they did wrong, or due to blind luck that your setup didn't trigger the bug. You know none of this because you've not seen the problem. So you proceed to compliment yourself and blame the victims, with zero evidence. But, for at least 3 people here, the fact is that Exchange does not book rooms properly. It double-books. It therefore is not going to be perceived as reliable. If that experience is widespread, then Exchange could be very vulnerable to an alternative (any alternative) that solves the same problem and doesn't give bad results for as many people. Cheers, Ben I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)

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