Outlook on Linux : Evolution Exchange

My laptop at work has some network configuration issue (I think) leading to
Outlook not finding the server – sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But
every other application uses the internet/intranet just fine. Only Outlook
doesn’t work and I’m tired of reading the mails from a web interface because it
is painfully slow and more so for high traffic mailing lists.

So, I switched on my desktop (which has only Kubuntu installed and no Windows),
ran apt-get install evolution and apt-get install evolution-exchange
commands, started Evolution, added a
new Microsoft Exchange account and it started downloading all the messages.

It’s ironic that I have to use a Linux machine to connect to a Microsoft
Exchange server. Maybe now I can get my laptop fixed by our IS. The last time I
reported the same problem, they deleted my profile and added it again and I had
to spend an entire day customizing my setup again, and the original problem
still wasn’t fixed. I don’t want to go through that trouble again…

P.S. On a completely unrelated note,
Beryl makes using Linux so much
more fun. The Expose-like preview of windows (F8 key) is very useful.

Update: It’s not over til it’s
over.

Update 2: Well, Evolution is locally caching the mail, all I have to do is
to leave it on overnight :), well that mitigates my email reading issues a lot,
assuming it keeps working that way.

Update 3 on 2007-06-13 Wed 04:07 PM: Finally solved the mystery of
Outlook not working… it was because of the Sify
Broadband software installed! Renaming
all the Sify-related exes to some other extension fixed the issue. Go
figure!