Final Recommendations for E-mail Evaluation Team - May
2002 - DRAFT
1) Mulberry is a promising application, which offers Kerberos and SSL support
for all protocols of interest and on all supported platforms, but is not
yet ready for wide use as a supported client. The Team concluded that it
has an overly complex and unintuitive interface which would make it very
costly in terms of support. Team recommends that Mulberry be reevaluated
next year, after a newer version has been released. More information is
available here.
2) Netscape 6.2.2 (Messenger) was found to meet basic requirements and to
work adequately with SSL for the POP/IMAP/SMTP protocols when used with
a correctly configured, TLS/SSL-enabled mail server. The Team recommends
that Netscape 6.2.2 be named as an acceptable short-term alternative, at
least for FY2003, to a Kerberos-capable e-mail client, which meets the criteria
of the critical
host policy. Detailed test results are available here.
3) The Team expects to continue to recommend Eudora 5.1x as the supported
e-mail client, as last year's Team did, even though the current released
version as of early May 2002, version 5.1, contains very limited Kerberos
support. However, Qualcomm has agreed to deliver a fully GSSAPI Kerberos-capable
version 5.1.x by end of May 2002. Support for SSL is also expected in this
version (though as of early May 2002 the working beta contains some SSL
functionality issues in the Mac OS X version). A subset of the Team will
continue to meet to conduct testing, and create any documentation necessary
for the updated version. The Team feels Eudora is a more strategic choice
(vs. Netscape) in the long-term, and expects to make its official recommendation
for version 5.1.x for FY 2003 once it is delivered, tested, and evaluated
fully.
4) The Team conducted very limited testing of the Outlook family of e-mail
products (Outlook 2000, Outlook XP, Entourage). The Team acknowledges that
the Outlook clients for most of the supported platforms are capable of basic
e-mail functionality in a TLS/SSL environment. However, the Team neither
supports nor recommends the Outlook family for widespread use on campus.
5) The Team concluded that IMAP is generally to be recommended over POP
for most users, but that user education and docmentation for transitioning
from POP to IMAP will be very important if users are to be able to transition
smoothly and realize the advantages of the IMAP protocol. Working drafts
of POP-to-IMAP migration documentation for our recommended e-mail clients
are available here.
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