XP Home users connecting to exchange 2003 1

[nsanto17]

We are currently looking at bringing our e-mail back in house.

Our sales people buy thier own laptops and currently have xp home on them all. I want to make the switch to exchange 2003 but i would have a feeling that the xp home clients will not be able to be authenticated to the exchange server b/c they are not joined to the domain.

can anyone elaborate on this for me.

Thanks

Nick

 

[Rearview]

I'm not certain if they could use Outlook as a Microsoft Exchange client, but they could certainly use it as a POP3 client.

 

[nsanto17]

Yea i know but using the POP3 client would cause problems b/c I want them to be also be able to use OWA. Using the pop3 client would defeat the purpose of OWA.

Does the POP3 client allow my client to connect to exchange using RPC over HTTP?

 

[Zelandakh]

No, RPC over HTTP(s) is an Exchange connector only, not POP. Your options here are to upgrade to XP Pro on each box, remove the security from Exchange so that anyone can access the mailboxes (hint: not a good plan) or use Outlook Express as a POP client with a "leave emails on server for 999 days" option.

 

[KRPGroup]

Unless the sales guys need a full offline copy of their mailbox they could just use OWA.?

 

[markdmac]

Yea i know but using the POP3 client would cause problems b/c I want them to be also be able to use OWA. Using the pop3 client would defeat the purpose of OWA.

Does the POP3 client allow my client to connect to exchange using RPC over HTTP?

These statement make no sense. Using Outlook as a POP3 client has nothing to do with using OWA. Perhaps you are confused about what OWA is? Outlook Web Access (OWA) is a web interface to Exchange accessed via a web browser. You can use OWA from any web client in the world and having Outlook or any other email client has no bearing on this.

I am inferring that you are instead referring to Outlook Over HTTP. This too has no bearing on the situation so long as the clients are getting DNS from your server. You could configure Outlook over HTTP without a problem.

The thing that I would caution you about however is that by allowing these machines onto your network you open yourself up to a world of support problems. Get these machines upgraded to XP Pro and joined to the domain so you can manage them via policy, scripts etc. Tell your sales people going forward that they won't have email access unless they upgrade. have the company split the cost of the upgrade if you need to, do whatever you need so that YOU become the admin on the boxes and can lock them down.

I hope you find this post helpful.

Regards,

Mark