David you are in great company detesting Microsoft. I fought for years but they have succeded in becoming the defactio standard. A glittering example of medocrity (sp?) winning out. Sad.

 My comment about visibility was prompted by what I see as a movement to dumb down user interfaces in the name of usability and the fact that I really appreciate what you have achieved. I am a big fan of layering, with each layer exposing more information and control. If one doesn't want to peek under the covers, one doesn't have to.

Wish us luck up here in the good old U S of A, we seem to need it.

Thanks

I run Mercury in front of Exchange Server. Why, you may ask?

We use an ISP to pick up all our mail addresses and we pop3 it down. This frees our tiny business from concern about availability when we have problems or do maintanence. Mercury provides much more control and visibility to monitor the process than MS Exchange so I let Mercury pick up the mail and have Exchange then pick it up from Mercury. Some may think this is nuts but trust me, it is not.

 Why do I bore you with this? I just want to suggest that visibility (and control) can be of major importance in an application so please continue to include as much of it as you are able in all areas of the application. This includes replies, filtering, spam management, list server, etc.

Thank you,

Roger

After doing things as I have for as long as I have, I've become set enough in my ways that I'm unlikely to change any time soon.

Configurability is both the curse and the splendour of Mercury, really - you can make it do just about anything, but the mass of options can make it hard to come to terms with.... I guess that's just the cost of doing business. <grin>.

Cheers!

-- David --

PS: As an aside, I always feel kind of aggrieved every time I hear of people running Mercury in front of Exchange like this - and there are lots of people doing it. The reason I feel aggrieved is simply that it makes me feel like I'm helping Microsoft, a firm that has done nothing but shaft me for the last decade or more... It feels like helping a mugger out by beating yourself over the head with a bottle. <sigh>

Don't take any offense though - I'd sooner you WERE running Mercury than WEREN'T, even if it *is* in front of a product I detest.