It’s easy to see why the messaging press has gone gah-gah over Microsoft Exchange 12. It’ll scrub your spam, including Sender-IDing, hookup with more smartphones and force email down your Windows Mobile devices’ throats. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Exchange 12 can be your secure(!?!) Edge Server, Bridgehead Server, Client Access Server, Mailbox Server, Public Folder Server, and/or Unified Messaging Server For All Communications From Fax To PBX… right out of the box.

In fact, Exchange 12 is ladled with absolutely every goodie a network manager ever wanted to gobble… Assuming, of course, that you swallow the pitch.

Baking all those juicy new features into one product creates more running processes on the same server… processes that, when swallowed in one byte, can make a server slow and dopey. Security headaches swell, too.

Before digging in, you may want to browse the afflictions plaguing current versions of Microsoft Exchange at Secunia and US CERT. The prognosis is obvious.

This fatty simply can’t afford the additional pounds.