Clients connect using MSN Messenger (or Windows Messenger for XP users). You can also integrate with the public MSN network. Unfortunately, we constantly received messages that said, "To use this feature you must be logged into .Net Passport." We're also unhappy that this product doesn't support groups; all our contacts appeared in one long list and were stored on the end-user machine rather than on the server.
Only Windows XP users can take advantage of screen sharing and whiteboards. Those lucky XP users can lock and take control of the whiteboard so that no one else can draw at the same time. In addition, though multiple people can use IM like a chat room, no public chat rooms are built into Windows Messenger. Setting up public chat rooms requires a separate IRC client.
Exchange 2000 Instant Messaging Service, Microsoft Corp., (800) 936-3500 (product support), (800) 426-9400 (sales), (425) 882-8080. www.microsoft.com/exchange/evaluation/features/instantmessage.asp
Ipswitch Instant Messenger 1.0
At less than $700, Ipswitch's IM may be inexpensive, but its chat, management and reporting features are second-rate. You can authenticate against an NT domain and see the list of users in the domain. You can use an Active Directory domain via backward compatibility, but can't see any AD groups, so all your users end up in a long list. To its credit, this product allows contact lists to have nested groups, which is one feature nobody else offers.
If you send a message to an offline user, the user receives it on the next login. You can also leave an offline status. A user can create custom away messages and assign a hot-key combination to put them up.
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There are many network courses that can address your present job's priorities and help you gain the needed skills to keep pace with industry changes and new technologies.
