Frankly, what Mark suggests is exactly what I'm doing right now. It's my favorite solution if I've access to a broadband connection.

In the "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US" category, we got a nice letter from German developer Oliver Vukovics, who writes English far better than I'd ever write in German. He suggests (and I'm leaving this unedited because I don't want to unintentionally muck up his meaning):

Public OutLook support a simple but worls wide necessary solution. You can share central installed PST files. What you need is a NT based Workstation, Windows Server or Terminalserver, with a central installed Outlook 97-2003. All connected PST files on this "Server" can be shared in a Peer-to-Peer or Server-Client network as Public Folders in addition to your Personal Folders.

Public Outlook is not an email synchronization product like netfolders or lot of other "sharing" products, we write directly in the shared PST files. It is a Store Provider like Exchange, but the central Store were PST files. So the network trafik is very small and you can make a central backup on the server computer.

All outlook functions are supported in this "Public Folders". You have the same functions like in your local Outlook, because it is a central PST file. We share not only contacts or only calendars, we share the hole PST file. For example, we have 5 central shared PST files with arround 180 shared subfolders. With 5 PST files we have as max. 10 GB central space, with Outlook 2003, unicode we have more space than with exchange.

If you have a Palm, PDA or a Nokia Communicator, you can synchronize with XTNDconnect PC the Public Folders, directly with your Handheld. With the mobilephone Nokia 6310 the including software can do this as standard.

For Notebook synchronization we have an additional program "Public SyncTool". This tool will synchronize, PST to PST or Exchange Mailboxes with PST files.

By the way, Oliver tells us he's had some difficulty getting covered in OutlookPower. If you're ever trying to get your Outlook-related news picked up, read our article, "How to submit an item for news coverage" at http://www.authorpower.com/stories/storyReader$44. Make sure you check your mail and that it doesn't contain phrases likely to get picked up by our filters.

That's all for now. I'll be back in town by next week and I'm sure we'll have more fun stuff to discuss.

Product availability and resources For more information on Public Outlook, visit http://www.outlookstore.com. For more information on getting your news covered by any of the ZATZ magazines, visit http://www.authorpower.com/stories/storyReader$44.

For more than 20 years, David Gewirtz, the author of Where Have All The Emails Gone? and The Flexible Enterprise has analyzed current, historical, and emerging issues relating to technology, competitiveness, and policy. David is the Editor-in-Chief of the ZATZ magazines, is the Cyberterrorism Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism and Security Professionals, and can be reached via email at david@zatz.com.