Is There a Linux Client Solution for Exchange 2007? 385
CrazedSanity writes "I have been working at my state job for about 7 months now, using the Exchange plugin for Evolution to check my email. Very recently the higher-ups decided to migrate to Exchange 2007, which effectively destroyed my ability to check my email through any method other than webmail (which means I have to constantly refresh/reload the webmail window). I'm sure somebody else has encountered the problem, but I'm wondering if anybody has come up with a working solution?" Note: CrazedSanity's looking for a client that will work with Exchange in a situation where replacing the Exchange install with an open-source equivalent isn't an option.
Quick and dirty (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Quick and dirty (Score:5, Interesting)
There's not a silver bullet here unfortunately. A VM, while handy and possible, isn't an elegant solution and it sounds like he's been working off of Evolution, so we're pretty much looking at just getting mail running. Easiest way: ask the local techs to make sure IMAP is running and install Thunderbird. Like I said, not ideal, but that's when you get when Microsoft decides not to play nicely with others.
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Like I said, using a VM to run Outlook can work. However, it's a lot more
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You played VIDEOS under XP on a P1 133mhz?
I call bullshit. I had an old Compaq Deskpro 4000 I upgraded with an Evergreen CPU to 400MHz and I think 256MB of RAM and it doesn't reliably play videos. I can't believe anybody plays videos - real videos - on a 133MHz machine.
Re:Quick and dirty (Score:5, Informative)
Try and get your hands on a copy of TinyXP Rev05. It is the smallest XP re-spin I have found. It uses no more than 45MB RAM after boot-up, leaving plenty of space for your applications.
Re:Quick and dirty (Score:4, Informative)
I'll second this.
Alternately you can use NLite (www.nliteos.com) to take your existing XP CD and strip it down.
Re:Quick and dirty (Score:4, Informative)
That's an option.. But why waste resources for just 1 program. Running WINE (http://www.winehq.org) or Crossover would be a much nicer option. Last I checked, Office 2003 runs near perfectly and you don't need to spend the money or the resources on running an entire Windows OS on top of a Linux install.
Just my 0.0002 cents
Re:Quick and dirty (Score:5, Informative)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555851 [microsoft.com]
If Office 2003 worked, then Evolution would work.
Re:Quick and dirty (Score:5, Insightful)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555851 [microsoft.com]
If Office 2003 worked, then Evolution would work.
Nice KB Microsoft: "The eliminate of the creation of Public Folder store and the connection from this Public Folder store to the mailbox store."
Apparently working with Exchange 2007 also causes brain damage...
Re:Quick and dirty (Score:4, Funny)
"The eliminate of the creation of Public Folder store and the connection from this Public Folder store to the mailbox store."
The English the motherlanguage not mine, clod insensitive!
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Only if you have access to Office 2003 (last time I checked a few months ago, they didn't yet support Office 2007) and you have the actual physical install media. Where I work, if you want Windows on your laptop, the IT department does the install, installs office 2007, and sends you over the whole thing. You can set up a dual-boot if you want... but we're not allowed to get our grubby little hands on any of the install discs. I'd be surprised if most places were any different.
Re:Quick and dirty (Score:4, Informative)
Or ask if you can remote-in via RDP to a server (or even an XP box) running terminal services. RDesktop is a lot less resource-intensive than running Windows/Outlook in a VM.
Someone in the company has to have a Windows box that can accept incoming connections.
Heck, grab an old dusty PC, toss Windows on it, see if you can put it behind your monitor, then RDP or VNC to it.
It's 2008, I have eleven computers in my cube; people literally do not know where to throw all their Pentium 4s. I just sent an email to our director asking him to clarify what the procedure is for getting rid of all this stuff is, since I virtualize pretty much everything now.
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Outlook 2003 works under WINE.
But the poster's ask brings to the front a question I've been asking for years: Linux has virtuously duplicated nearly every Windows functionity... it's almost like that is Linux's purpose, a free alternative to anything available from Microsoft. Why isn't there an OSS integrated mail/cal client that duplicates Outlook's functionality, from push to public folders to scheduling and invites to calendar publishing?? It is due. Heck, I'd even be happy with a non-OSS alternative.
Duh (Score:5, Funny)
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i've used it.. and some times still do to send quick messages to people..
Re:Duh (Score:5, Informative)
I'd imagine most folk that have administered a mail server have sent mail with telnet. It's not difficult and if your new server is doing something weird it can be very useful for diagnosis.
You just do something like:
telnet mail.example.com 25
EHLO me.example.com
MAIL FROM: <me@me.example.com>
RCPT TO: <you@mail.example.com>
DATA
Subject: Message sent with telnet
Here's my message body.
.
Re:Duh (Score:4, Funny)
Of course, things get a little trickier if you need to attach a binary file to the message.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Informative)
# man uuencode
uuencode(1)
NAME
uuencode, uudecode - encode a binary file, or decode its representation
SYNOPSIS
uuencode [-m] [ file ] name
uudecode [-o outfile] [ file ]...
DESCRIPTION ...
Uuencode and uudecode are used to transmit binary files over transmission mediums that do not support other than
simple ASCII data.
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Understood.
The tricky part is typing the results in over your telnet connection.
(Yes, I can think of several ways to avoid having to do that, but it makes my already poor attempt at a joke even less funny, so.....)
Re:Duh (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Duh (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Duh (Score:5, Funny)
Informative?
A guy suggesting, seriously as far as I can work out, that you can replace Outlook with TELNET! is marked "informative?"
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Not at all. I replied to a post which said:
I merely pointed out that many mail server administrators will have done this frequently. It'd not crazy and not particularly difficult. Still, just because you can doesn't mean that's how you send your mail. Most of us use an MUA for day to day sending of email. I certain
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Informative?
A guy suggesting, seriously as far as I can work out, that you can replace Outlook with TELNET! is marked "informative?"
All jokes aside, if their shop is running Exchange 2007, SMTP won't be accessible for him. He'll need to talk MAPI [wikipedia.org] to the exchange server, which technically isn't even a protocol itself, but instead runs over M$ RPC.
Anyone know how to send MAPI commands using TELNET?
Re:Duh...TELNET?? (Score:2, Informative)
IMHO, that's not an option. TELNET into Exchange Servers nowadays has been (mostly) blocked due to the inherent vulnerabilities, i.e.- taking over an e-mail server. Not only that, but what with IMAP, SMTP is about the last thing anyone wants in this 'make it pretty' world in the newer servers. I've gotten along with 'mail' and 'pine' for the longest time, but not everything is easy to someone who doesn't understand how to or has not learned the 'old' ways; or how an e-mail server works. Everything doesn't n
Re:Duh...TELNET?? (Score:4, Informative)
As the post above you mentions, I don't think you entirely get the point. Telnet as well as being a way toget a remote shell is also a great way to communicate with servers that use ASCII protocols. For instance I can enter "$ telnet google.ca 80" and type in "GET / HTTP/1.0" and it will return 200 OKAY plus the google homepage. The same goes for SMTP and FTP. So as long as the server supports SMTP you can "telnet" into it.
The more you know.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Informative)
Why? Does the mail server you are trying to connect to not support the latest SMTP RFC [ietf.org]?
Using "EHLO" can give you extended information that tells you the capabilities of the mail server, and when you're trying to diagnose a problem, that's a good thing. Many times I have figured out a mail server is misconfigured from only the response to "EHLO".
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Troll? I thought that was pretty funny. Have you ever tried to use SMTP commands directly through telnet? Craziness!
Huh? What is so difficult about that?
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Does ^H work?
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Many times, especially when some idiot qmail fanboy sets up a mail server/relay without a functioning 'mail' command. The only problem I have is not having backspace.
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Telnet is useful for debugging all kinds of different network protocols, including problems with MSExchange. Been there, done that.
Do you mean to tell me you have not written and debugged a sendmail.cf file?
Now, get off my lawn.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Funny)
Do you mean to tell me you have not written and debugged a sendmail.cf file?
Anyone who has knows that Sendmail should be boycotted for not properly crediting Lovecraft in the design of sendmail.cf
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ugh, all these replies and not one mentioning that the guy wants to CHECK mail, not send it.
Anybody speak text-mode-Exchange?
Maybe this would show it who's boss
$ cat /dev/random | nc mail.mydomain.com 135
Meh. (Score:2)
This is of course for Crossover's version of wine with their proprietary fixes, for good ol gnu wine has Outlook 2007 listed as garbage [winehq.org].
Personally, I would nag on the IT people to free themselves from depending on an untrustworthy company.
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The worst part is you end up paying for Office 2007 when you're only going to use one application that doesn't do a very good job of what it's meant for anyways.
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you can buy outlook by it's self.. you don't have to get the full office suite
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You pay for client access licenses for Exchange and that includes Outlook. You buy Office for the other stuff. And Outlook does a pretty good job, but its job isn't solely as a mail client.
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You can use Outlook 2003 with Exchange 2007 if the Exchange admin hasn't disabled access for older clients. I think Outlook 2003 works better with Crossover than Outlook 2007.
Yes. Zimbra. (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, Zimbra, and many other Groupware solutions meant just for that purpose.
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Zimbra looks nice right up until it comes time to pay for it.
Zimbra mobile and blackberry support are only available for the pay versions.
Outlook/Mapi sync and ISync are only available in the professional version.
I don't mind paying and frankly the price is very good but I really don't like the idea of "Renting" software. You must pay by the seat and by the year for standard and Professional version. What A PAIN.
Every time you hire somebody are you going to to have to go through a bunch of stuff to add a se
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"Little bit of playing the Devil's advocate here..."
Quite badly, I must add.
"but can you name me another enterprise solution that lets you send and receive emails, delegate access to mailboxes (R, R/W), share calendars and delegate access to calendars with reasonable granularity?"
Basically... everyone?
You should have asked about the Exchange's really making difference features like complex document flux management, seemless integration with desktop office suite or instantly notizing new message arrival, but
Re:Meh. (Score:5, Funny)
No. Lotus Notes is disqualified due to the "solution" requirement.
I had the same problem (Score:3, Informative)
I have a terminal-window that runs a bash-script that uses wget (or curl, don't really remember) to pull down the webmail-main-page and actually grep for the "boldness" of the new messages. When ever there is a bold line somewhere in the main view it makes a noise and flashes a tcl/tk-window saying that there are new stuff on the web-mail. I tab to the correct place in the firefox, refresh and there you go.
I know the solution is a little weird, but it works and it does what I need, so I really do not care to try out something else (except advocating OSS in my work place).
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evolution branch (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:evolution branch (Score:5, Informative)
I've spent considerable time trying to get this work and it is still nowhere near being mature enough to be usable.
Don't get me wrong, it's better than it was a few months ago. It will allow Evolution to make a connection and even download most of the folder information. For us, it has trouble deciphering email addresses in the headers, doesn't display some messages at all and, most annoyingly, continues to consume all available memory until it crashes.
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I've spent considerable time trying to get this work and it is still nowhere near being mature enough to be usable.
Don't get me wrong, it's better than it was a few months ago. It will allow Evolution to make a connection and even download most of the folder information. For us, it has trouble deciphering email addresses in the headers, doesn't display some messages at all and, most annoyingly, continues to consume all available memory until it crashes.
Yeah, that sounds like early stage Evolution. It was ridiculously unstable for a long time, and still gives me occasional problems and, at the least, UI issues when connecting to a large mailbox.
It's more one of those instances where either some company has to put a few dollars in to help out with development, or just wait it out and hope someone else does it first.
perhaps use thunderbird (Score:3, Informative)
enable imap, use ldap. (Score:2)
The only solution I've found is to enable Imap on the exchange server, and also enable SMTP for incoming mail. Then install Thunderbird.
You can also use the ldap features of Active Directory to do lookups of people's email addresses.
There's a calendaring plugin for thunderbird called lightning, but it doesn't seem to work with Exchange 2007 (I can't accept meeting invitations).
IMAP (Score:2)
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"The only downside is that this doesn't sync"
And do you really think that's an "only"? A client for a groupware server that "only" lacks groupware support?
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Yes it does. Just go to http://exchangeserver/public [exchangeserver] (replace exchangeserver with the FQDN of your server)
What I did... (Score:5, Interesting)
I just waited until the same higher-ups that forced the upgrade got so fed up with the poor performance of Exchange 2007 that they forced us to switch back.
Took about 3 weeks.
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poor performance of Exchange 2007 /QUOTE
They underscoped. Hardware requirements for 2007 went up. Assuming his site didn't blow the migration, this won't happen. They probably wanted unified messaging or the improved web portal, both of which would naturally increase hardware requirements.
OWA? (Score:2, Insightful)
What's wrong with Outlook Web Access? Use Firefox or even Prism/XULRunner or whatever and you have everything you need.
OpenChange (Score:5, Informative)
OpenChange is an open source MAPI client that supports all versions of Exchange up to and including 2007, it is native MAPI and thus does everything you would expect an Exchange client to do, and it does it a reasonable speed.
http://www.openchange.org/ [openchange.org]
There is already an Evolution plug-in that will be mainlined into GNOME 2.24. However, you can currently get it for Fedora 10 and other platforms.
The current Evolution plug-in uses OWA web page scrapping and is really lame, and it most likely broke from web interface changes in 2007.
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The most recent comments I've read indicate that the MAPI plugin for Evolution (which is built upon OpenChange libmapi) will not be ready for Evolution 2.24 after all. Perhaps version 2.26 will have what we're waiting for.
http://johnnyjacob.wordpress.com/2008/07/11/evolution-exchange-2007-mapi-provider-changes-in-schedule-and-more/ [wordpress.com]
http://www.go-evolution.org/MAPIProvider [go-evolution.org]
http://www.go-evolution.org/Evo2.24 [go-evolution.org]
http://www.go-evolution.org/Evo2.26 [go-evolution.org]
iPhone (or any other ActiveSync device) (Score:2)
If you are not happy with just OWA (although it does refresh itself and do popup notification etc) and want something that will notify you when you get new mail, get any ActiveSync device (iPhone, iPod Touch, any Windows Mobile, some Treo's, anyone know if Android supports it?).
It will be - portable and push-synced and if you DO want to see the email in all its glory, you can always pull up OWA for that specific message.
Other than that, you may also want to run an old windows XP desktop somethere and RDP to
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...or any Nokia S60 3rd edition phone? Ref : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/7998_Microsoft_Exchange_Now_Support.php [allaboutsymbian.com]
Exchange 2007 web services API (Score:2, Informative)
The Exchange 2007 web services API should make this job easier.
Introduction to Exchange Web Services in Exchange 2007
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb408417.aspx [microsoft.com]
New Programmability Features in Exchange Server 2007
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb332450.aspx [microsoft.com]
More discussions:
Exchange 2007
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=3891474 [ubuntuforums.org]
http://psankar.blogspot.com/2007/10/write-evolution-plugins-using-mono-c.html [blogspot.com]
"Exchange Server 2007 has a Exchange Web-Services Interface. IIUC Working with web
Conform (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem isn't mail. It's everything else. (Score:3, Informative)
What folks seem to be missing here is that the attraction to Exchange isn't that it's just a mail server. It's the calendaring, tightly coupled with the server that makes it work. Nothing else short of Google Apps has come close to working as well as Outlook + Exchange does.
Now, having said that, there's plenty of good work going on integrating other systems together (I personally run standard IMAP / SMTP for mail, and use Google Calendar for my calendaring). This works great, but is not 'exchange compatable'.
There are some other workarounds - An outlook 2007 client can be configured to publish it's calendar up into Google Calendar via some plugins - once you do that, Thunderbird + Lightning comes very very close to working the same as Outlook does, but it's not exactly an elegant solution.
We've hit hte same problem at one of my clients regarding Outlook 2007 - Evolution no longer works, and some of hte Linux folks are stuck.
The last bit is, as others have said, a vmware install of XP -just- running Outlook. It's not as horrible as you might think :)
CrossOver Office + Outlook 2003 (Score:2)
Use Outlook with CrossOver Office. CodeWeavers supports Outlook 2003 which should provide a MAPI implementation compatible with Exchange 2007.
Probably IAG (Score:5, Informative)
Our email is being moved over to Exchange.. after being moved off Exchange, to something else.
Previously, the admins dared not place Exchange on the internet, lest it be hacked. So the only way to get your mail was via VPN. Since they configure the concentrator to only allow Windows clients with the firewalling on, you can't access anything on your local network, and yea verily, this did sucketh.
Presently, there is a public IMAP server (running some variety of not-Exhange). And it's nice to be able to get your email without crippling your network connection, and from the IMAP client of your choice (ie, Thunderbird), installed on the device of your choice.
Soon, they intend to move us back onto Exchange. Because they still dare not place Exchange onto the internet, it will be secured behind something called Intelligent Application Gateway [microsoft.com], which appears to be some kind of SSL proxy server.
So our options are....
Given that the current solution works fine, I'm none too happy ; reading the announcement the first question that arose was "Are they idiots?", closely followed by "How fat was the wad of sweaty Billbucks they were given?"
Your options are ; give money to MS, or use a client that sucks (OWA lite). All the other clients suck LESS than OWA Lite, but to access any of them you must give some money to MS. Minimum spend being "a copy of a MS operating system", for IE, and maximum being Outlook. I'm not sure what the license cost of an IAG tunnel client is, but since you have to run it on Windows, it's a guaranteed winner for MS.
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My most recent employers have all been Linux focused in terms of product development, but they've all had "I only know Windows" people in the IT department.
So yeah, what you said is pretty much how too many of them are set up infrastructure wise. All the managers, sales, and IT people use Windows/Outlook and all the people who make and support the product use Linux. Even at companies that have the word "Linux" in it's name it's like that.
I always wonder why people charged with making business decisions ab
You could still use the web interface with FF (Score:2)
This could get you by until your email app supports Exchange 2007.
fetchexc (Score:2, Informative)
There is a utility called fetchexc that will fetch incoming mail from Exchange 2000/2003 OWA servers. It would need some updating to work with 2007, though.
http://www.saunalahti.fi/juhrauti/index.html [saunalahti.fi]
There isn't, but there needs to be (Score:2)
There are about two or three drop-in replacements for exchange these days, more or less open and free, and then there is the outlook plugin for evolution. Which sucks (I use it daily), because the Gods of Gnome have decided that the evolution-'platform' is going to be their next Operating System or something - extremely difficult to fiddle with, both in source and in configuration, because you need to be running two or three CORBA-like services at the same time and have god knows how many libraries in arb
Um, use outlook? (Score:2)
Now, we only have Exchange 2003 and I only have Outlook XP running under Crossover office, but it is a suggestion.
OSS Project - "Mailman in the Middle" (Score:3, Informative)
MS publishes the APIs for how their RPC over HTTPS, think its current name is now Outlook Anywhere works. They do this basically so that cell phone and other mobile applications can access the Exchange server. If you want to create a Linux based E-mail app or add functionality to connect to Exchange 2007 that doesn't use IMAP or POP, the best methodology would be to create a connection using the Outlook Anywhere APIs. It could be a cool project, I would be interested in working on it with anybody who wants to step up. Perhaps a interesting approach could be to build Outlook Anyway to IMAP intermediate application that could then be employed to act as an intermediary between whatever Linux client or heck even Windows mail client you wish to use and Exchange 2007. I mean basically you could put the app on your machine, set it first to talk to Exchange 2007 and then setup mail client of choice to talk to IMAP and SMTP on intermediary app. Not saying it wouldn't introduce some delay, but if done right, it would be "wicked helpful" If done in JAVA or "I cannot even believe I am suggesting this" .NET limited to mono supported APIs, then it could be single app for both Window and Linux users. Hit me back if you would be interested in doing something like this. I think we should call it "Mailman in the Middle".
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I don't think Thunderbird does Exchange 2007 yet. You know them zany Microsoft folks and their new protocols all the time! I wonder why they make such dramatic changes all the time, I really wonder, I just can't figure it out... hmmm...
Re:what am I missing here... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:what am I missing here... (Score:4, Funny)
go, voltron!
Where's the outrage? (Score:2)
I hadn't heard until today that Exchange 2007 changed the protocol and broke Evolution. Nobody is complaining about that fact?
Is this not Slashdot? I expected roughly 50% of the responses to be, "See! This is why Microsoft is evil!" with the other 50% being, "What's the big deal? Just use IMAP!"
Re:Where's the outrage? (Score:5, Informative)
The OWA ("web scraping") Evolution plugin is no longer developed. The new approach is MAPI, which is the connectivity solution for Exchange 2007. Just search for Evolution Exchange MAPI.
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uhm, thunderbird ?
or one of the many other mail clients?
Ummm... Tbird doesn't speak Exchange's protocol.
Re:what am I missing here... (Score:5, Informative)
Well, Exchange does support IMAP, but usually Exchange admins disable it for the explicit purpose of preventing people from using clients other than Outlook.
Re:what am I missing here... (Score:5, Informative)
By default, Exchange 2007 has POP3 and IMAP services disabled out of the box. An administrator has to run services.msc and change their states from disabled to automatic, and start them. SMTP to the Internet also is disabled and needs to be explicitly enabled, and a command run to get anti-spam agents enabled and running. However, this is not out of malice, this is just a basic common sense "ship as few possibly hackable features running out of the box as possible, let the customer enable what he/she needs" philosophy.
Once the services are enabled, Exchange 2007 is as good a POP/IMAP server as anything out there. Thunderbird works well with it. Of course, both the POP and IMAP servers support SSL/TLS.
Maybe some Windows admins are trained to only allow Outlook to connect, but it takes almost no time at all to allow other E-mail clients such as Thunderbird or mail.app to work without any issues.
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Well, Exchange does support IMAP, but usually Exchange admins disable it for the explicit purpose of preventing people from using clients other than Outlook.
I thought most countries had laws against cruel and unusual punishments!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruel_and_unusual_punishment
I guess those usually only apply to the government.
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Well, Exchange does support IMAP
Exchange is more than a mail server.
Re:what am I missing here... (Score:5, Funny)
Exchange is more than a mail server.
It's an Adventure!
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Exchange is more than a mail server.
You misspelled "less".
(joking, not trolling)
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I was going to say... you can't tell me that Exchange doesn't support POP or IMAP.
Though I would have been terribly surprised.
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IMAP is fundamentally broken, so most Exchange admins don't want to encourage users to use it. Use POP, you admin will be more likely to enable that.
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I'm curious why you say IMAP is fundamentally broken. As a side note, Gmail's POP is quirky; I find that IMAP works much better with Gmail.
I need to store my mail on my mail server (so I can get to my mail from multiple computers), and I like using a local mail client. I need to consolidate mail from six e-mail addresses into one mailbox, so setting POP to "leave mail on the server" isn't a solution. How would you suggest I do this?
The only way I know of would be to set all my other addresses to be forwa
What about activesync? (Score:2)
What about Activesync? That always has to be there, and they can't easily change the protocol because it would break the execs' Windows Mobile gadgets.
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Only if the helpful (note that he said state job) IT staff have loosened the security policies and enabled POP3 or IMAP. Then he has the problem that the groupware (calendars/tasks/public folders/apps using custom forms) doesn't work.
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They're more likely to enable OWA (webmail) than POP3 or IMAP. Last time I checked those two were off by default. But, if IMAP is on, Thunderbird works fine for email. Squirrelmail works too. (Don't ask, it was a weird request.)
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So what's the big problem?
You're assuming a couple of things:
1. That the admin staff have left IMAP enabled. This is by no means guaranteed.
2. That the person posing the question doesn't need anything more than basic email functionality and can live without the shared calendars.
3. That Exchange 2007 supports IMAP IDLE (I really don't know myself). Without it, you're stuck hitting "Check for new mail" on your client rather than "refresh" in the browser - not really much of an improvement.
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You could close the tab ;-)
Help me out...what am I missing? (Score:2)
the higher-ups decided to migrate to Exchange 2007, which effectively destroyed my ability to check my email through any method other than webmail
So your organization migrated to Exchange 2007 and didn't provide any way to check it other than webmail? No client at all?
Or do they say "use Outlook and we'll support it, or else pick whatever you like but we won't support it"?
Or did they say "use Outlook", but you don't like Outlook and so you're going around their rules?
Just thought I'd ask.
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There are a lot of problems with Google Apps, as they stand presently.
While excellent web applications, they pale in comparison to the features that lots and lots of people require in MS Office. In addition, they have issues with security, namely people's documents ending up in other people's accounts. This is a Bad Thing(tm) for businesses.
On top of that, they provide no kind of regulatory compliance that I've seen.
I really like the apps. I use them almost exclusively for my personal work, but they're not
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IIRC, the "single instance storage" feature was removed from Exchange 2007. I heard a lame reason, something along the lines that it was becoming too complex to maintain the code.