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Mozilla The Internet Businesses

Which Organizations Have Standardized on Mozilla? 833

Posted by Cliff from the don't-taunt-happy-fun-lizard dept.
andy brunetto asks: " We are investigating email clients to deploy as our "standard" at the college where I work. I'm trying to find out who is using Mozilla for their email. When I say "who" I mean organizationally, as I realize 99% of us geeks already use it. What organizations out there are rolling out Mozilla as their standard web and/or email client, and why? Yes, we are considering using Thunderbird, once it is final. Thanks!" Hopefully this will make companies realize that the Internet isn't comprised of just IE users.
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Which Organizations Have Standardized on Mozilla? More

Which Organizations Have Standardized on Mozilla?

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  • Well, mine is (Score:5, Funny)

    by blitzoid ( 618964 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @02:27PM (#6360824) Homepage
    My organization is entirely devoted to using mozilla and mozilla based products.

    And yes, I AM looking to expand our current one man workforce.

  • mail != web browsing (Score:2, Redundant)

    by grub ( 11606 )

    Submitter said:I'm trying to find out who is using Mozilla for their email.
    Editor adds: Hopefully this will make companies realize that the Internet isn't comprised of just IE users.

    The submitter asked about using Mozilla for email, not webbrowsing.

    • Re:mail != web browsing (Score:3, Insightful)

      by tmark ( 230091 )
      Hopefully this will make companies realize that the Internet isn't comprised of just IE users.

      Moreover, I fail to see how tallying "We use Mozilla" would go very far in convincing anyone that Internet users aren't predominantly IE users, anymore than tallying "Who uses IE" responses on an MS-fanboy site would indicate IE's pre-eminence.

      To build a convincing argument here you need scientifically conducted surveys, not optional queries aimed at users of a particular browser on a niche site with considerabl
      • hmmmmmmmmm... I dunno if the author is looking for a survey that will hold water statistically (Slashdot, impartial? HA!). Seems like they just want to hear stories of "how and why", stuff like that. y'know, just finding out what the rest of the family is doing ^_^

  • Sun does (Score:5, Informative)

    by rwoodsco ( 215367 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @02:28PM (#6360834)
    Sun Microsystems is transitioning to use Netscape 7, which is close enough to Mozilla...

    • You neglected to mention from what... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SlashChick ( 544252 ) <erica@noSpam.erica.biz> on Thursday July 03, 2003 @02:45PM (#6361099) Homepage Journal
      You forgot to point out that Sun's current browser standard is Netscape 4.7 (at least internally, which I assume is what you're talking about.) It has been for years, though Netscape 6 and 7 are also available if you know where to look.

      There are many, many internal applications at Sun that are written for Netscape 4.7 and don't work in NS6/NS7 (don't ask me how, but it's true. It boggles my mind, too.) So yes, Sun has 40,000 employees still using the broken, non-standards-compliant Netscape 4.7 as their primary browser, and they've been trying to "transition" away from it for over 2 years now.

      • Re:You neglected to mention from what... (Score:4, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03, 2003 @03:04PM (#6361302)
        Same thing inside IBM - many of the old-school AIX users absolutely refuse to use anything but Netscape 4.7 - all of the younger crowd that come in immediately go "blech!!" and download Mozilla 1.3 or 1.4. IBM is in the process of standardizing around Mozilla, or at least getting all it's WAN apps to work in it, and support for 4.7 will be sumarily dropped this summer.

        Most of the reason for 4.7 still being in use is old-timer inertia. Most of the new crowd is using Linux and Konqueror or Mozilla anyway. Linux is here, Unix on the desktop is dying. Well, maybe not inside Sun...

  • Half.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Gortbusters.org ( 637314 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @02:28PM (#6360836) Homepage Journal
    of our large R&D development community is using Netscape, mostly because these people are using mostly Solaris or some are using Red Hat (7.3/8/9).

    The other half is ALL IE, Outlook, Exchange.

  • 99% of geeks? (Score:5, Funny)

    by slagdogg ( 549983 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @02:28PM (#6360840)
    Sorry, but the real geeks use Mutt [mutt.org] ... graphical email clients are for geek posers ;)

  • I must be one of the 1% (Score:5, Informative)

    by gilesjuk ( 604902 ) <<giles.jones> <at> <zen.co.uk>> on Thursday July 03, 2003 @02:28PM (#6360841)
    I use KMail, it's quite a good mailer IMHO.
    • Join the Club, we must be 2% when combined! Kmail is a great free email client that is very fast and very feature filled. With the upcoming release of Kontact KDE will have a full PIM application. The beauty of Kontact is that is uses KDE's parts system to actually just piece Kmail, Kalendar, Knotes and Kaddressbook together into one very useful application. Kmail/Kontact will be even cooler since they are working on a server component for Exchange like calander/notes sharing system. Watch out people..

  • Uh, what? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by worst_name_ever ( 633374 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @02:28PM (#6360845)
    I realize 99% of us geeks already use [Mozilla].

    Really? Everyone I know uses pine, Eudora, or Mail.app - you should be careful about making assumptions based on your own personal circumstances before you try to extrapolate data for use at an organization.

    • Agreed. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Just Some Guy ( 3352 )
      I love Mozilla as a browser but wouldn't touch its email app with a 10-foot pole. Besides, is their a huge advantage to centralizing on only one email app? Other than having tech support only dealing with a single program, email is a bit different than the web - I'm unaware of any major problems with using any random IMAP client to read from any random IMAP server. If someone likes a particular program, and they know it well enough not to cause a load on your help desk, is there a real reason not to let

      • Re:Agreed. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Mr. Show ( 648023 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @03:11PM (#6361392)
        Besides, is their a huge advantage to centralizing on only one email app?

        Well, many large enterprises standardize on Outlook because they use Exchange as their mail server. They do this so that they can use extra mail features that Exchange provides, like marking messages for follow-up or recalling messages. Admins at my former employer used follow-up flags to remind us that, say, we had to fill out an HR form by a certain date. The e-mail would be flagged for follow-up by such-and-such a date, an appointment would be added to the calendar (if memory serves), and the admin can configure a reminder to pop-up on my screen if I don't clear the follow-up flag by a certain amount of time before the deadline.

        The real biggie is the ability to see everyone else's calendar and schedule meetings based on that. You can also do things like marking individual attendees as optional or required; setting up a uniform reminder time that will appear on all attendees' screens; replying to a meeting request as confirmed, tentative, or decline the invitation; proposing a new meeting time; etc. It's actually pretty powerful, and works well in large, beauracratic organizations. You can do similar things with tasks and the journal.

        However, I have recently jumped ship to a small company, and much to my delight they are getting off of Outlook and onto Mozilla Mail because the "desktop engineering team" (two guys) are big into OSS :). But, for the time being at least, we are still using Exchange for the mail server. I use Moz Mail to interface with Exchange strictly via IMAP, but there are still some here who use Outlook and interface "natively" with Exchange.

    • try mutt (Score:3, Informative)

      by MattW ( 97290 )
      Everyone I know uses mutt, because Pine is a slow-ass memory hog.

    • Everyone generalizes from one example... (Score:5, Funny)

      by slashbofh ( 622003 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @02:48PM (#6361133) Homepage
      "Everybody generalizes from one example. At least, I do."
      -Steven Brust [dreamcafe.com]

    • Re:Uh, what? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nihilogos ( 87025 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @03:21PM (#6361531)
      Real geeks use Mutt.

    • Re: Uh, what? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by XTaran ( 70498 )

      Principially you're asking the right question. Anyone who's believing that 99% of all geeks use the mozilla MUA, hasn't thought more than half a second about that subject. Maybe even hasn't thought at all.

      But IMHO even pine is no more a geek's favorite MUA. Most geeks I know use mutt. Maybe with pine key bindings because of being used from pine in former times. ;-)

      But I think we should make a big difference between several groups of geeks:

      1. Those who (are forced to) use Windows: There maybe a very b

  • One Suggestion (Score:5, Informative)

    by Lieutenant_Dan ( 583843 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @02:28PM (#6360851) Homepage Journal
    We rolled out IE5.01 using the IEAK (Internet Explorer Administration Kit). It would be a great thing if one could customize Mozilla in straight-foward manner for corporate deployments.

    • Re:One Suggestion (Score:5, Funny)

      by slagdogg ( 549983 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @02:33PM (#6360940)
      Mozilla is incredibly customizable, and you don't need to jump through administrative hoops (IEAK) to customize it. I "Snoopified" my menu bar in a few short minutes of hacking ... so my "Fizile" menu now says "Bizounce" instead of "Exit" ... what, I never said the customization was useful.

      Check this URL [mozilla.org] for a nice tutorial on hacking Mozilla / Phoenix / Firebird.

  • I use mutt... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03, 2003 @02:28PM (#6360854)
    I don't have a GUI you insensitive clod!!!
  • MIS has folks on Mozilla 1.2, but I'm running Eudora 5.2x or pine if I'm on a shell. I've used Eudora/pine for soooo long, it's just what I like.

  • It's tough to do. (Score:5, Informative)

    by idiotnot ( 302133 ) * <sean@757.org> on Thursday July 03, 2003 @02:29PM (#6360858) Homepage Journal
    Unless all your clients are running Win2k with the antitrust service pack, and have no permissions....you can't elminate Internet Exploder.

    I've installed the Netscape versions of Mozilla on the systems I maintain, and urge people to use them. It seems to work.

    • Re:It's tough to do. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SlashChick ( 544252 ) <erica@noSpam.erica.biz> on Thursday July 03, 2003 @03:10PM (#6361374) Homepage Journal
      Here's the easiest way to "eliminate" IE for 99% of users:

      1) Set Mozilla as the default browser. (Just make sure it doesn't also take over GIF, JPEG, etc. files as well... mine did that here at home and I can't seem to wrench it back from Moz using Tools/Folder Options, but that's another story.)

      2) Remove IE from the start menu and quick launch bar.

      3) Profit!

      Now, it's true that "iexplore.exe" will still be around somewhere, and if people really want to use IE, they can find it. But you know what -- if they're that hell-bent on using IE, let them use it. Most of your employees, however, will be just as happy with Mozilla as their default browser, so you shouldn't hear many complaints.

      • Re:It's tough to do. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Rysc ( 136391 ) <sorpigal@gmail.com> on Thursday July 03, 2003 @04:05PM (#6362071) Homepage Journal
        I sat down in front of a computer in a public lab at my local college campus last semester and did the following:

        Downloaded Pheonix (it was not yet FireBird) and unzompressed it.
        Ran Phoenix and installed the IE skin.
        Edited the Phoenix toolbar to be quite a lot like IEs.
        Set Phoenix as the default browser.
        Deleted the IE links from the desktop and start menu.
        Added links to Phoenix using the IE icon with the text "Internet Explorer" to the desktop and start menu.
        Quietly left.

        I'm not sure what impact this really had, but I did it on 3 computers at differing times. I do hope I caused some havoc, but not as much as I hope nobody noticed.

    • Re:It's tough to do. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MarcQuadra ( 129430 ) *
      I was wondering how that worked. iexplore.exe is just a front-end to mshtml.dll (and others) right?

      Couldn't you just rename the iexplore.exe file after installing the latest SP and 'hiding' IE? Programs that use the MSIE libraries will still work, but Internet Explorer itself will not. Am I totally wrong here?

  • Columbia University (Score:5, Informative)

    by Abel Wingnut ( 684859 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @02:29PM (#6360861)
    All public workstations at Columbia University have Mozilla as their default browser.

  • 99% ? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Stonent1 ( 594886 ) <stonentNO@SPAMstonent.pointclark.net> on Thursday July 03, 2003 @02:30PM (#6360874) Journal
    Ideally yes, but 99% is a bit generous. I know quite a few it gurus that just use IE. I mean mozilla is the politically correct thing to do, but you know, IE is pretty familiar to most people. If we could see the logs at Slashdot, I'm sure that IE would have a commanding lead.

  • we are (Score:4, Funny)

    by i.r.id10t ( 595143 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @02:31PM (#6360892)
    We chose Mozilla to go along with IE and Outlook. All the Netscape users are happy (we used to standardize on 4.77), all the Outlook users are saying "WTF is this dragon head on my desktop"

  • Not many.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mblase ( 200735 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @02:31PM (#6360903)
    In the corporate environments where I've been working, Microsoft servers, browsers and email remain the status quo.

    As a web developer, I use Mozilla because it's stricter about standards, and pages that render well in Moz almost always look the same in IE, while the reverse isn't true. One coworker gives me a (humorous) hard time about my refusal to use Microsoft FrontPage or IE when our company is unquestionably "a Microsoft shop".

    Seems like there's no businesses -- certainly not incorporated ones -- want to hire experts in free software like Linux, Apache, PostgreSQL and Mozilla when 2kServer, IIS, SQL Server and IE are what all the other big companies are using first. Mozilla's got an uphill battle, and it knows it.

    • Re:Not many.... (Score:4, Informative)

      by bogado ( 25959 ) <bogado.bogado@net> on Thursday July 03, 2003 @03:08PM (#6361342) Homepage Journal
      My experience is that pages designed with css standards in mind almost never look ok in explorer. :-/ After my pages look ok under mozilla I always have to ask a friend to see it under explorer, and tell me what didn't work so I can work arround looking for ie problems.

  • Purdue (Score:5, Interesting)

    by phaedo00 ( 143820 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @02:31PM (#6360907) Homepage
    Purdue used Netscape 7 as the standard browser and mail client on over 3000 lab machines.

  • IBM (Score:3, Interesting)

    by trialsboy ( 651481 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @02:32PM (#6360917)
    I think IBM's license for Netscape has just run out so alot of people are switching to Mozilla, not sure if this is worldwide or just UK.

  • I use it at several clients (Score:5, Informative)

    by kikensei ( 518689 ) <joshua@nOSPam.ingaugemedia.com> on Thursday July 03, 2003 @02:36PM (#6360972) Homepage
    I work with small businesses, anywhere from 5 to 100 users. I have 3 clients of 20, 25, and 45 users respectively all using mozilla mail. Hell, I even have the 45 person shop switched over (almost everyone) to the ALPHA thunderbird. I just don't need the hassle of outlook virus issues, the users who don't use IMAP can keep their POP mail on their /home directory n the server, the address book talks to LDAP. I use the latest SuSE mail server which integrates LDAP address books out of the box,as well as webmail. I am switching to thunderbird because we have some corporate partners who have B2B websites that require IE5 or better, so I need to standardize on IE unfortunately. Thunderbird can invoke your default browser in windows, unlike Moz Mail. Well, I love it, but not exactly in an enterprise setting.

  • Standard email client sucks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DeadSea ( 69598 ) * on Thursday July 03, 2003 @02:41PM (#6361034) Homepage Journal
    Why standardize? As a corporate user, I would hate to have to use a mail reader that is not my favorite. More to the point, I can think of several features that mozilla mail should have before I would recommend it to everybody at my company:
    • Message redirection - Forward a message to another person so that it looks like it came from the orgininal person. Useful for functional addresses common in corporate settings. For example a message was sent to webmaster@ when it should have been sent to support@
    • Disable new mail sound through filters - Corporate users often get lots of mail that they don't actually need to read. Mozilla filters are pretty good. You can sort this mail to another folder and mark it as read. Unfortunately, you can't the new mail sound still goes off when this happens.
    • Change SMTP servers easily - Laptop users are often frustrated with mozilla because there is no easy way to switch between predefined smtp servers when they are between home and work.
    • Change the reply-to on an outgoing message without creating a new account - In mozilla you have to create an account for every email address from which you want to send mail. Creating an account means that you have a new set of mailboxes over on the side of your screen. For corporations that use functional addressing, and have each person with multiple functions, users won't be happy with all the accounts they need to create.

    • Re:Standard email client sucks (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RatBastard ( 949 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @02:50PM (#6361155) Homepage
      Standardized software is the only reasonable way to do it in the corporate environment. How many different email clients do you want to support? How many different sets of bugs and user interface problems do you want to have to remember how to fix?

      While the Mozilla email client may or may not be the best solution for your environment (I haven't used it, so I can't form a valid opinion (like that's stopded me before!) on it), but a standardized client is vital if your IT department is going to get anything done at all.

      My office has a very tightly controlled Standard Desktop Model. Every desktop system uses the same basic model. They all have the exact same version of the exact same program and they all have network shares that mount to the exact same place. With the exception of specialists who have additiona software installed for their needs, any user can sit down at any desktop in our state-wide agency and log in and get right to work. Everything they were using at their desk will be there (save the red stapler, I kept that).

      How hard is it to learn a second email client as a user? After a few days you pretty much know how to use the basic functions you need to use to get your job done.

      • As a former support guy I know where you are coming from. Some users choice of software or options should get them shot.

        As a geek though I don't really let such things bother me. I can deal with ten different email programs as easily as one. Let the users go crazy - I can handle it. I can grok new software in a few minutes time and really 99% of your users will choose one of 2 or 3 most popular programs in a given problem domain. I could even say that having multiple programs is good because it breaks thin
  • "as I realize 99% of us geeks already use [Mozilla]."

    Sorry kid, but where I come from, 99% of people use Outlook and/or Exchange. Exchange or not, Outlook 2000 and XP are very capable email clients, and the easy calendar/contact integration and Palm synchronization make them the real winners. (By the way, there is a patch for Outlook 2000 that disallows opening of any harmful attachments. This comes standard with Outlook XP. I switched from Eudora two years ago and I've never even been able to open a virus-laden attachment, let alone send one, as it asks for confirmation when a program tries to automatically send something.) I browse the web using Mozilla (I'm using it right now), but Outlook wins hands-down on email.

    If you want to standardize, standardize on the server side, not the client. Most organizations I have worked at standardized on IMAP (whether they did so through Exchange or another IMAP server.) IMAP has the advantage of keeping everyone's email on the server so people can access it through the web, at multiple computers, etc. The disadvantage, of course, is disk space -- you're going to need at least 10MB per account, and preferably 25MB or more, which quickly adds up. Plus, you're going to need to find a reliable way to back that up, and tape drives are expensive.

    My recommendation is to standardize on IMAP, set up some webmail, and have some HOWTOs for several email clients. This being a college, you're going to find that most everyone will be using Outlook Express. Include HOWTOs for Mozilla, OE, Outlook, and whatever you choose as your webmail solution (there will be people who use the webmail exclusively.) As long as you set the standard on the server side, I don't think it's necessary to set a standard client -- just a recommended one. If you want that to be Mozilla, so be it, but understand that not everyone is going to want to use it.
    • Although I agree that Outlook is a great program, it definitely sucks when it comes to managing emails (Every email client that I've used sucks in this regard).

      Dragging an email from the inbox to the calendar opens up a new appointment with the message as the text and KEEPS the email in the inbox. This is great. But dragging a message from the inbox to my *saved messages* folder is not so great, it moves the message (or if I right click, it copies the message) to this new location. If bill sends me the m

  • One more that is standardizing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tsetem ( 59788 ) <tsetem@gmai[ ]om ['l.c' in gap]> on Thursday July 03, 2003 @02:42PM (#6361046)
    Our division is standardizing on Mozilla 1.4. Our previous standard browser was Netscape 4.76. IE & Outlook has tried to sneak in, and unfortunately some of our vendor's products require IE. We're not quite big enough to demand their products work with both browsers...

    The main reasons we're sticking with Mozilla and not going IE?

    Platform availability. It's available on Windows, Linux & Irix.

    Not MS

    Spam filtering

    Doesn't propogate virii

    Low/No cost

    Why are we going with Mozilla instead of Netscape?

    Available on all above platforms.

    Doesn't have the AOL marketing embedded in it.

    Windows installations will be WinInstalled, so all plugins & customizations can be centralized.

    Hope it helps.

    • MAIL, not browser (Score:3, Interesting)

      by arth1 ( 260657 )
      Why do people assume that if they use a web browser for email, so does everyone else?

      I don't want HTML in email. I don't want to use monolithic programs. I want a mail client that works even if the browser should crash (or not exist, for that matter). I want to be able to access my mail even when I have no GUI available.
      mbox format and any mbox-compliant mail client will do that for me. In a pinch, I can even use cat/tail to read mail and telnet or pipe to a mail server to send mail.

      I'm sure there's s

  • 99% of geeks use Mozilla ... for *email*? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Xouba ( 456926 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @02:48PM (#6361134) Homepage

    C'mon, I understand using it for web browsing, but email?

    Most of the posts that I see in mailing-lists are written with Pine, gnus (emacs' mail thingy), Mutt [mutt.org], KMail [kde.org] or MS Outlook. Maybe there's some Mozilla too, but it's not near "99%", not by a extremely long shot.

    Ob-"I use": I'm very happy with Mutt myself, and my friends use also Mutt or Pine. Maybe we're all oldschool guys :-)

    Ob-"Kids these days": Kids these days! When I was your age, we didn't have email. We had to shout to each other from miles and miles of distance! Sore throats were quite usual, trust me :-)

  • Why standardize on a product? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pesc ( 147035 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @02:52PM (#6361178)
    Where I work, people use what they want to use. Many browse with IE, some use netcape or Opera, others use Konqueror or Mozilla.

    For E-mail, most use Eudora, some use Outlook, pine or Kmail.

    None that I know of use their web browser for E-mail.

    Why do most organizations think they need to standardize on products rather than protocols or document standards? OK, the "IT department" thinks they need to provide support, but in many cases you could loosen up a bit... Use widely adopted protocols. Avoid proprietary protocols and formats that lock you in with a specific product.

  • University of Chicago (Score:3, Informative)

    by Vann_v2 ( 213760 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @02:54PM (#6361197) Homepage
    The Networking Services and Information Technologies (NSIT) folk at the University of Chicago distribute a connectivity package during orientation week that includes Mozilla. The package also includes stuff like Eudora, though. Also the public computers in the Reynolds Club are made by Sun, so there's no IE there.

    You can see a picture here [uchicago.edu].

  • Wake Forest, as of this coming fall (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mnemia ( 218659 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @03:02PM (#6361277)

    Here at Wake Forest, we have a program where all students receive IBM laptops through the university (it's included in tuition). These come preloaded with a lot of expensive commercial software that most students couldn't afford to purchase legally if they weren't going through the university. The interesting thing is that this gives the university a great deal of control over the initial setup of students' machines (including those who are non-CS majors). We can customize them all we want or delete Windows and put Linux on there but the vast majority of students are just using what comes on there.

    Until now, the Windows machines were actually all set up to use Netscape 4.79 and its mail client and to hide IE and especially Outlook. This was done (I assume) for security reasons, especially considering that virtually all the virus email I've received from on-campus mailing lists, etc is from people who ignored the preconfigured setup and installed Outlook Express anyway.

    This fall, they are moving to Mozilla 1.4 (I'm guessing that the reason is the similary to the old Netscape interface). They decided that Mozilla 1.4 was superior to the newer Netscapes and are deploying it over a year on about 5,500 installations.

    Combined with another new pilot program to preinstall Linux dual-boot setups for CS students here (and give us bigger hard disks than other students), open source seems to be on the rise here.

  • Our University (25k) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @03:14PM (#6361440) Homepage
    Use pine/Eudora. And I think the new Linux computer lab (one and only on entire Uni) is using pine/Evolution. Sorry, but I'm not going to trust my mail to Thunderbird any time soon either. Firebird *cough*Phoenix*cough* is fine for displaying content - but my e-mail client is there to permanently *organize* content, and I want it stable, reasonably bugfree and upgradable.

    At least the Mozilla project has figured out that might some of us are interested in some parts like Firebird, couldn't care less about Chatzilla and Moz Mail and whatever else they put in there. They're going from one big monolith to smaller apps that do their thing - sounds almost like the old Unix design profile, and I think that's a good thing...

    Kjella

  • Investigating? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Arandir ( 19206 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @03:18PM (#6361496) Homepage Journal
    We are investigating email clients to deploy as our "standard" at the college where I work. I'm trying to find out who is using Mozilla for their email.

    Do you know why IExploder and Outlurk have %95+ market share? It's not because Microsoft is a monopoly, or because they are better products, or because Bill Gates is a member of the Trilateral Commission or the Bilderbergers. It's because of the herd instinct. People want to use the same software that other people in their group use. Corporations use IE/Ol because other corporations do. Geeks use Linux because other geeks do. There are rare exceptions, but by and large human beings rival cattle in their ability to be molded by the opinion of their peers.

    I get the impression from your question that you're seeking to follow the herd. If you were one of the rare exceptions then you wouldn't care what other companies are using, and just deploy Mozilla. But since you're asking, it seems to me that either you or someone above you needs the assurance that using Mozilla in an organization isn't new, innovative or radical.

    You're not asking about problems others have uncovered while deploying Mozilla in an organization. That's not your concern at all. Instead you merely want to know who is using it. If you want to be a individual unswayed by the unthinking opinion of your peers, then just go deploy Mozilla. But if you just want to make sure your head isn't sticking above the level of the herd too far, then stick with the Microsoft products that all the other organizations are using.

  • Why can't people... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by brunetto ( 686272 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @03:23PM (#6361563)
    just answer the question and stop criticizing the submitter (me!), picking apart what a "geek" is, or going on about my choice of words? I did not ask for a review of Mozilla, or what other email/web clients exist, or your opinion on standardizing on a product. BTW, we standardize so we can provide suppoprt to the 3000+ computers here.

  • My company does... (Score:3, Informative)

    by cornice ( 9801 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @03:32PM (#6361702)
    I am the tech guy for a small manufacturing/distribution company. For a couple years I made sure that I told the owners about every major Outlok exploit and worm. I also made a point to explain how hard it is to comply with MS licensing (upgrading OEM versions on Beige boxes etc.). One day one of the owners received a strange, personal, confidential Word document from a close friend's mail worm. I immediately received the OK to convert the company to Mozilla. I then expanded that to include IMAP as the standard delivery protocol. For IMAP support I would heve preferred Mulberry but users seemed to adapt quicker to Mozilla (simpler interface and better inline image support). Now after a few months people have adapted and everyone seems quite happy with the switch. Backups are easier. Remote access is possible. I still think some miss Outlook because it's prettier to them and because the calendar in Outlook is so much better but I think the rest either don't care or prefer Mozilla. I do get strange looks when I tell new hires that we use Mozilla for mail though.

  • A Mom/Mozilla story (Score:3, Informative)

    by motorsabbath ( 243336 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @06:13PM (#6363319) Homepage
    My Mom has been using Mozilla for all email and web browsing for over 2 years now and she loves it, it's perfect for her. Entirely not computer savvy, she is still able to maninpulate mail folders and print and yaddayaddayadda. On an entertaining note, it took a while for me to explain to her why other people were being crippled with virii (lots in my family) and she was not... If my Mom can use it daily, without fail or lost email, it's a solid app.

    Once I upgrade her hardware (she's dragging her feet, the 350 k6-2 is still ok) I'll move her from WindowMaker to KDE 3. No offense WindowMaker - you rock! - but she needs KDE.

  • 99% geeks use Mozilla for email ?! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jacek Poplawski ( 223457 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @06:54PM (#6363569)
    I'm trying to find out who is using Mozilla for their email. When I say "who" I mean organizationally, as I realize 99% of us geeks already use it.

    This is 100% wrong and I don't understand why nobody wrote it yet. If 99% geeks use Mozilla for mail, then who uses Mutt, Pine, or Evolution? Mainstream people?

  • Yes, due to laziness (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Sloppy ( 14984 ) * on Thursday July 03, 2003 @07:43PM (#6363821) Homepage Journal
    At the tiny place where I work (not a "corporate environment" in the way most people think of, though technically we are), I use Sylpheed (which I'm pretty comfortable with) and the 'dozers use Mozilla's email client, at my weak recommendation of "here, try this."

    My recommendation was weak not due to dislike, but simply because I didn't have a lot of experience with Mozilla mail so I didn't know where it falls on the sucks-to-rules scale. But I figured it would probably work "good enough" so I gave it to them and yes, it worked.

    If I didn't know Mozilla was good, why did I give it to them? Pretty much just to avoid having to spend time on research. I know there are very likely some good mail clients for Windows, but I don't know what they are, and didn't want to spend a lot of time evaluating software. So I was looking for an easy way out.

    Another easy way out would have been MS Outlook since I think the machines in question probably had it preloaded. But most of our email comes from The Internet, so obviously that would be a stupid choice. If a worm/virus/trojan comes in here, it won't matter what "dumb user"'s fault it is, it'll be my mess to clean up. Just because I didn't want to spend a lot of time on research, doesn't mean I could just be completely irresponsible.

    Yet another easy way out would be to use a Windows port of Sylpheed, since I know Sylpheed pretty well (and I actually like Sylpheed except for it's seemingly single-threaded nature). But the day (hour?) I was working on this, all I found was one port of Sylpheed-Claws (the bleeding edge version of Sylpheed) and it was very crashy. So I gave up on that right away (remember: I was looking for easy way out).

    By picking Mozilla, I didn't have to spend time researching it, and I was able to go on to the next project. If it turns out to be inadequate for some reason, then I guess I'll have to spend more time looking. Perhaps saying we're "standardized" on Mozilla would be an overstatement. We're "standardized" on IMAP and SMTP, which is how things should be. [pedant mode on] Those are standards, Mozilla is just an implementation.

  • University of Saskatchewan (Score:3, Informative)

    by |<amikaze ( 155975 ) on Thursday July 03, 2003 @08:20PM (#6363985)
    http://www.usask.ca

    Mozilla is the standard in most of the labs. The only ones that don't have moz are the really old machines, which use Netscape 4.something.

  • European geeks don't use Mozilla (Score:3, Interesting)

    by roffe ( 26714 ) <roffe@extern.uio.no> on Friday July 04, 2003 @02:25AM (#6365425) Homepage

    ever since, say, ages ago, Mozilla had the option of using quoted-printable with News and mail. not News or mail, but News and Mail. so to those of us who need Latin 1, Mozilla could be used for News or Mail, but not both.

    And that's why we European geeks eschew Mozilla.

  • How about printing out Web pages on Web sites? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by antdude ( 79039 ) on Friday July 04, 2003 @03:45AM (#6365700) Homepage Journal
    Even with Mozilla v1.4, I still have problems printing under Windows:

    URLs for examples:

    http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp ?p roduct_code=301859&pfp=BROWSE (only one page?)

    http://reviews.cnet.com/Toshiba_Port_g__3505_Tab le t_PC/4505-3122_7-20711028.html?tag=dir (first page is a waste -- big gap)

    Thank you in advance.

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