Outlook 2003 doesn't support news servers either.
Info on Outlook 2003 can be found here
http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/editions/outlook.asp
Even without an Exchange server Outlook 2003 has lots of benefits over
Outlook 2000 or even Outlook 2002 (pst-files don't have a 2GB limit
anymore). It's a bit hard to explain as the look & feel of Outlook has
changed quite a bit as well. I suggest you evaluate the product when it for
yourself.
Outlook 2003 indeed protects the addressbook when any other program tries to
access it. Also attachments that have the potential of being a virus are
also blocked. There is also a Junk-Mail filter in Outlook 2003.
The view of Outlook can be configures in many many ways. The reading pane
can now be set on the right side as well next to your itemlist. Messages can
be sorted and grouped so you can e.g. collapse all the mails you received
more than a week ago and expand only the mails younger than a week. This
week you can have many items in the folder and still keep the list short.
Contact support has been expanded as well. Clicking on the sender name of a
received message will display a whole menu of actions to perform. I also
like the feature to include a picture for the contact. My personal contact
have a picture of them and I configured my business contacts to have the
companylogo as a picture for easy recognision.
Then there is a new Naviationpane which replaces the Outlookbar. There are
Favorites folders, Search folders and... well it's just too much. I really
like the new Outlook 2003 as you probably noticed already.
I hope this answered your question.