Exchange and Slow Links

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I'll admit that if you have a dialup link, running the full Outlook client can be slow. It works fine - I've done it all over the world, with sometimes miserable connection speeds - but it's not quite the performance you get used to at your desk.

Here are two ways I get around this today. Both of these work quite well over dialup; I've tested them the hard way!

Outlook Web Access: First, there's Outlook Web Access - which, despite its name, is a function of Exchange. OWA looks a lot like Outlook, but it's really web pages served up to Internet Explorer. The big news, though, is that you can connect directly over the Internet, such as from an airport kiosk; you don't need Remote Access Services (RAS) into your corporate network. It doesn't have every slick feature of the full Outlook client, but it's more than simply functional. It's available on both Exchange 2000 and Exchange 5.5 (click here and then search for "Outlook Web Access"), though the former has some significant enhancements.

OWA isn't only for dialup. In fact, I use it on a regular basis from my home machine. On DSL, the process takes perhaps 15 seconds from typing the URL to seeing my inbox. Over dialup, it probably takes longer to dial and connect than it does to get to my inbox once I'm connected.

I've also used this to check my mail from a machine at another company's site, going from their intranet to our corporate network. Since it's just browser pages, it doesn't do something nasty such as bridge the networks. (Obviously, when you do this, close the browser when you're done. It's a website; if you leave it on your screen, your inbox is right in front of the next user! You wouldn't walk away from an e-commerce site with your credit card number still visible, right?)

Remote Desktop: Tucked away in Windows XP under Start [right] All Programs [right] Accessories [right] Communications is something called Remote Desktop Connection. (I mention its hiding place because the online help doesn't.) I have Remote Desktop enabled on the Windows XP Professional box under my desk. Now, whenever I'm connected on our corporate network. I can log in to my own desktop. Here's where I use it:

  • With my laptop in another building at Microsoft. Rather than, say, having two instances of Outlook up on different machines, or not being able to get to the document I'm editing because it's open on my other machine, I simply "remote" my other machine's desktop onto my laptop. I'm typing on and looking at my laptop, but I'm actually working on my desktop box. (If your "desktop box" is under your desk, is it a "deskbottom box"?)

  • On workstation kiosks located in the lobbies of our buildings. If I don't have my laptop, or don't want to boot it up, I can just sit at one of these workstations and work remotely on my desktop.

  • Doing a presentation in one of our wired conference rooms. Some have workstations at the podium, but I've seen folks borrow a computer in a conference room to connect back to their own desktop to run PowerPoint or just look up some information.

  • From home or on the road, after logging in remotely to our network. I can run the full Outlook client this way - or any other Office app, our internal apps, anything that's on my machine at work - because I'm actually running the apps on that machine.

Users can enable Remote Desktop from the Remote tab in System in the Control Panel; it's disabled by default. You can manage it using Group Policies, to either enable or disable it. The client can be loaded from the Windows XP CD to any 32-bit Windows system. There's even a tool to "remote" your desktop over the Internet, without the need to dial in to your corporate network; I haven't tried this myself, however. There's good information available when you enter "remote desktop" into the Windows XP help system. (Note that Remote Desktop is not the same as Remote Assistance, wherein a user can let a help desk take control of the machine to walk through a problem.)

Incidentally, those kiosk machines mentioned above are a great and inexpensive productivity enhancer for corporations with multiple sites or buildings. I know that most of us don't have two work computers. These kiosks are underpowered boxes that otherwise would have been recycled, and they use old 640x400 monitors. (When I remote into my 1280x 1024 desktop, XP resizes the apps to fit properly in the new window; when I get back to my desktop, it resizes them back for my big monitor.) I'll check with our IT group to see if we can come up with a guide to implementing these workstations easily and securely.