Firefox

Before we rolled out Exchange, our email was hosted by our website hosting provider - specifically, Net1Plus, a local company. Net1Plus is a great company, and I have nothing but praise for their services - which I also use for this site (StarKeith.net. Their web servers run a sweet version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which means that email is handled by stable, proven Linux-based software. The only time there’s a problem is when a server is down (which is rare, and Net1Plus queues the mail while the server is down so we don’t miss anything), or when there’s some sort of DNS problem (which is even more rare). We occasionally have problems sending mail because of authentication problems - most email services these days have systems in place to deal with spam and have some way of not being an “open relay” - but in general (and especially since we moved to our new office with it’s static IP address) things have been peachy-keen. Which is good, because email is arguably the most important piece of software in our office - or in any modern office these days. When email doesn’t work, people get grouchy - in the same sort of way people get grouchy when the phones don’t work, or when the power goes out. These are the sorts of things that you need to have working - and that when they don’t work, nothing can get done. They’re important - you expect them to work 100% of the time, and by and large they do.