Knowledge or Knowing?

Martin Tuip

This
time not a technical article, but this is as important. I spend
quite some time out in the Exchange and Exchange 2000 newsgroups and mail lists answering questions and reading posts.  By doing this I help people out and
gain knowledge myself at the same time.  Most questions though could have
been solved by a quick research in numerous ways. There are more people like me
who get satisfaction by helping other people out.

This time not a technical article, but this is as important. I spend quite some time out in the Exchange and Exchange 2000 newsgroups and mail lists answering questions and reading posts. By doing this I help people out and gain knowledge myself at the same time. Most questions though could have been solved by a quick research in numerous ways. There are more people like me who get satisfaction by helping other people out.

Is it
because of a lack of knowledge or a lack of knowing that there are plenty of free support
resources?  Knowing a lot about a product sure helps, but knowing where to
find information you need can be as valuable as knowing about the product. 
I run a website about Exchange 2000 at www.exchange-mail.org
which offers a Frequent Asked Question list about Exchange 2000.  FAQs like
these are available for almost any product and usually will answer most of the
questions you would have. In this article I’ll will post the sources I regularly
check and have helped me in the past. As you can expect I can’t mention all the
sources available … I don’t even know them all 🙂

The
biggest help of all and which should be on your A list to check out if you have
problems is the online TechNet database at Microsoft:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet

If you
don’t have a TechNet subscription at your work which can be because you work at
a small business then this could be your lifeline.

Other
valuable sources for Exchange 5.5 and Exchange 2000 are:

http://www.slipstick.com
is Sue Mosher’s award winning Outlook solutions website.

http://www.cdolive.com
is Siegfried Weber’s website about Collaboration Data Objects.

http://www.swinc.com/resources/exch_faq.htm
offers one of the best Exchange 5.5 FAQs on the web based on questions from the
Exchange list at Swynk.com

http://www.exchangefaq.com
offers a large FAQ for Exchange 5.5.

http://www.exchange-mail.org
offers information about Exchange 2000.

http://www.labmice.net
is a big website for information about Windows 2000.

http://www.mvps.org

Try to
consult one of these sites before posting questions on a maillist and you’ll be
suprised how much information they can give you.

Till
next time.

Martin
Tuip