@bridget99 said:Meh. It wasn't so long ago that Microsoft was all bothered about MMC and how cool snap-ins were. I never got it... how much do the snap-ins really have in common anyway? And how many of them were as annoying as shit?
You mean like how the Refresh button isn't available half the time? MMC always seemed half-baked to me, too, which is a pity because it's a good idea if done correctly.
With Exchange, it seems to be a toss-up between whether Microsoft or the sysadmin is responsible for the workload of uncommon tasks. If there's something that you may only ever have to do the once, should Microsoft expend the effort desiging and testing a GUI control to perform it, or should the sysadmin waste a load of time figuring out from various blog entries and half-written MS docs exactly what PowerShell command must be entered?
With regards to the OP: I guess the advantage of Windows Small Business Server is that it's "cheap", but since many small businesses don't run their own IT anyway, would it not be nice if Microsoft would licence normal Windows Server + Exchange with the same CAL limit, for exactly the same price, so that no-one is forced to screw around with all the stupid wizards if they don't want to? The joy of SBS is wasting time trying to figure out whether the wizards can do what you want (in which case it's supposedly do-or-die), or whether you're expected to do it the "hard" (read: easy and obvious) way. Also, notice how the SBS control panel actively discourages Group Policy by making you set every bleeding setting on a per-user basis?