ENT News says that a better way to view Windows SharePoint Services is as a teaser for the full functionality in Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003. According to the article, taking this view would lead enterprise administrators to only roll out the free add-on service as a pilot to see if there’s real demand within the organization for a full SharePoint solution.

eWeek’s Rob Enderle asks if Apple’s Panther OS is the one. Panther is better able to work in an Active Directory environment (and there are far more of those now then there were when Jaguar shipped); it will also work better in an NT Domain or Windows workgroup. Its built-in email system works with Microsoft Exchange, and it continues to enjoy the support of Microsoft’s Mac Office team.

BorderWare Technologies announced that customers of its MXtreme Mail Firewall Appliance are unaffected by the recently disclosed vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server and Outlook Web Access (OWA). In addition to the two exploits, Microsoft has issued several bulletins specific to weaknesses in Microsoft Exchange’s security, none of which affect MXtreme customers.

GFI’s Email Security Testing Zone has launched a set of new email tests. The tests enable administrators to find out free of charge if their network is protected against emails that use different exploits to try to break into and infect a system, including an email with a long subject, an attachment with no filename, an attachment with a long filename, the Popup Object Exploit and an attachment with a double file extension.

Personal Computing World, the UK’s best-selling IT monthly magazine, awarded its highest ratings and top honors to the InBoxer for Outlook spam filter from Audiotrieve, LLC. In an extensive group test involving 10 leading spam filters, InBoxer was named the Editor’s Choice and given the Best Buy award. It was also awarded five stars overall and five stars for ease of use.

RoweBots Research announced the launch of Meeting 2004. Meeting allows users to plan agendas and capture minutes on-the-fly. It is intended to be run in the office and in the meeting room, and works in conjunction with MS Office, Exchange, Outlook, Project and Windows. Sub notebook computers, tablet PCs and wireless networks are targeted delivery platforms for Meeting.

Zetta Server V3 installs on Open Systems hardware to create unified SAN + NAS appliances providing capabilities that neither SAN nor NAS can provide on their own. The solution is designed to provide high availability for mission critical applications such as Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Internet Information Server, SQL server, and Oracle.

Don’t forget about the launch of Microsoft’s newest email server software, Exchange Server 2003, which officially debuted as part of the Office System. Internet Week says that Exchange 2003 should have an easier time convincing customers to upgrade than will Microsoft’s application suite, Office 2003.

IntelliReach Corporation announced today that they are cautioning network administrators, IT security professionals and others that recent legislative initiatives, such as Massachusetts’ new anti-spam bill and Senator Charles Schumer’s proposal of a national do-not-spam list, will not accomplish the task. The Massachusetts bill, sponsored by Democratic State Senator Jarrett Barrios, requires businesses to identify all email advertisements with the letters "ADV" in the subject line so recipients can filter out ads before reading them.

CRN reports that two Linux ISVs tried to steal the spotlight by unveiling email software optimized for Windows-based Outlook 2003 and Exchange 2003. According to the article, SuSE Linux said that it will begin shipping in mid-November a version of its Openexchange server that offers enhanced support for Outlook 2003 users. Ximian offers an add-on that allows a Linux desktop user to access Microsoft’s new Exchange Server 2003.