Exchange Mailbox vs pst file for mail delivery

[David]

My client is a branch of a large corporation which hosts Exchange servers.
The corporate IT department has a quota on the size of the user's mailbox,
as well they should. On the other hand my client does not want to be
constrained by this quota. I think that they should follow policy by
archiving mail but my client is aware that they can have new mail delivered
to a pst file on the client machine enabling them to avoid the Exchange
Mailbox altogether and collect unlimited mail (and other Outlook items) in
the pst file.

One thing I know that we lose by using a pst file for mail delivery is the
reliability of the storage on the Exchange server. If everything is in a
local pst file then when the client machine goes up in smoke all is lost
unless we have strict rules enforced about backing up all desktops and
notebooks.

What are some other arguments for using Exchange as it was intended and not
collecting everything in a pst file? Any advice is greatly appreciated.

David

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

The user with a .pst file as the default store will also find that they are getting scheduled for meetings even when they're busy, because Outlook isn't publishing their free/busy information to the server.

..pst folders can't be shared.

Data in .pst files isn't available in OWA.

Also see http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq_appxf.htm

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers