As a person with no ideological tie to unix based operating systems or 
open source software it appears that the majority of posts on this list 
take some sort of shot, large or small, at Microsoft.  I'm glad someone 
else made this point, I was really considering making it myself after the 
recent post regarding exchange alternatives but hesitated thinking maybe 
I'm the odd-ball out here (mainly due to the volume of posts bashing 
microsoft).  The reason I mention the post asking about exchange and 
outlook is that it seemed even more obnoxious than usual.  It appeared 
that this person wanted any alternative to Microsoft products irregardless 
of whether or not they were "better", the fact that they would not be 
Microsoft seemed sufficient to this person.  Maybe it's part of an 
ideology that anything open source *must* be better than anything 
corporate (I would disagree, I can find you many examples in which that 
assumption is false, in fact I would venture to say that the majority of 
corporate software is "better" than the majority of open source software).  
I think that person is doing their boss and company a disservice in 
catagorically rejecting all things Microsoft rather than making an 
objective cost-benifit analysis.  There are days that after reading posts 
to this list I get the impression the entire Linux "community" is made up 
of communists and anarchists that care less about quality of software than 
they do about beating big business.  Personally I find advantages and 
disadvatages to both Microsoft and open source products.  Having been a 
software developer long enough to remember when it was commonplace to have 
multiple platforms in any given company I find it nice to be able to write 
code once (all for WIN32) and know that it will run everywhere in a given 
company.  Think how much simpler install routines are for the whole WIN32 
family than they are for the multitude of unixes.  On the other hand I'm a 
big fan of Apache, having done a lot of web development over the past 
several years I've come to appreciate Apache much more than IIS.  Anyway, 
I think it's important to have an open mind and evaluate all aspects of a 
product/project rather than just knee-jerk rejection of all things 
Microsoft.
Ben (getting off the soapbox)

PS the previous email mentioned a steep learning curve and complex 
environment as one of the reasons for diehard devotion to Linux et al, but 
then why does that same atitude of zeolotry exist in the Mac camp when (up 
to OS9 anyway) they didn't even have a command line interface.  They've 
always attempted to be the epitomy of intuitiveness.