Microsoft Mail Postoffice
The Microsoft Mail Postoffice applet (shown in Figure 5.22) lets you create and manage a Microsoft Mail workgroup postoffice, which may be located on your machine or any other machine on your network. A workgroup postoffice is the heart of the Microsoft Mail shared-file mail system. The files related to the workgroup postoffice are stored in a number of different folders created when the mail administrator initially sets up the postoffice. Windows for Workgroups, Windows 95, and Windows NT all contain mail applications capable of connecting to and exchanging mail with a Microsoft workgroup postoffice.
After you launch the Microsoft Mail Postoffice applet by double-clicking its icon, you will be given two options: create a new workgroup Postoffice or administer an existing one. After choosing the desired option and choosing Next, you will be asked to input the location of the workgroup postoffice to create or manage.
Tip: The Microsoft Mail Postoffice applet lets you manage workgroup Postoffices created by Windows for Workgroups, Windows 95, or Windows NT.
When administering an existing postoffice, this location should be supplied in Universal Naming Convention (UNC) format, which is as follows:
\\Servername\\Sharename. In this case, \\Servername is the network name of the computer containing the workgroup postoffice, and \\Sharename is the name of the shared folder containing the postoffice folder on that machine. To administer an existing postoffice, you must also know the username and password of the administrator of that postoffice.
For More Information: For more information about shared folders, see “Sharing and Connecting Drives and Printers,” Chapter 9.
If you are creating a new postoffice for your workgroup, you will need to supply a folder name for the new postoffice or use the Browse button to locate the folder using the mouse. Under most circumstances, you would supply the root folder of one of your hard disks, such as c:\ or d:\, as the name. When Windows NT offers to create the new postoffice, it will automatically give the postoffice’s folder a name of wgpo0000, which will be created as a subfolder of the folder you just selected as the parent. For example, if you chose c:\ as the parent folder, the postoffice would be stored in a folder named c:\wgpo0000. This step is shown in Figure 5.23.
If, for some reason, you want the postoffice to be stored as a subfolder of a folder other than the root of your hard disk, that folder must have already been created on the hard disk and should be empty.
Because you are creating a new postoffice, you will also be asked to enter the mail administrator’s account information (the person who will act as the postoffice manager). This dialog box is shown in Figure 5.24.
Finally, for other workgroup users to be able to access your new postoffice, you will need to share the postoffice folder and give other network users with accounts in the postoffice full access permissions (read/write/delete).
Caution: Be sure to create only one postoffice per workgroup (one is the maximum number supported) and make sure all workgroup users attach to that postoffice. If more than one postoffice exists in the workgroup, the postoffices (and therefore their participating users) will not be able to exchange mail with one another.
Once you have created or selected your workgroup postoffice and entered the administrator username and password, the Postoffice Manager window will appear. Using this dialog box, you will be able to perform postoffice management functions such as adding, removing, and modifying user mailboxes and viewing shared postoffice folders.
Tip: Remember to create mail accounts for all users before having those users attach to the new shared postoffice. The users will need to know the password you set up for their mail account.
Modems
One of the best new features of Windows NT 4.0 (and Windows 95) is its inclusion of universal modem, or Unimodem, driver technology. Microsoft Windows has always provided centralized printer drivers that can be shared by all Windows applications. Unimodem technology delivers this same concept to modems.
In previous Windows products (except Windows 95), each communications program had to have its own built-in modem support. It was impossible for every program to have support for every modem on the market, and frequently a user’s modem would be supported by some applications but not by others. Unimodem solves this problem by letting all Unimodem-aware applications use a single, centralized driver to communicate with your modem.
The Control Panel’s Modems applet is provided to let you configure your modem (and accompanying Unimodem driver) in Windows NT. The first time the applet is run, Windows NT 4.0 offers to automatically detect your modem (shown in Figure 5.25). You can also choose the modem manually from a list by checking the appropriate box on in the window before clicking the Next button.
Special Note: Luckily, Windows NT 4.0 ships with support for many of the most popular modems on the market. However, even if your modem is not on this list or is not properly detected, you can use the Have Disk option (after telling Windows NT 4.0 you wish to manually select the modem) to install a vendor-supplied modem driver. If your modem did not ship with such a Windows NT 4.0 driver disk, you should contact the modem’s vendor to see whether a Windows NT 4.0 driver is available. If none is available, find out whether the modem is compatible with any other modem supported by Windows NT and use that driver instead.
Once your modem is installed, it will appear in the modem properties dialog box, as shown in Figure 5.26. This dialog box lets you add or remove modems and configure the properties for modems already installed.
To configure a modem already installed, which you should do with caution, highlight the modem and choose the Properties button. The two tabbed sections that appear let you change modem properties such as the modem’s COM port, communications rate, and other options.
Caution: Changing the modem’s configuration settings (in the Properties window) can cause the modem to stop working properly with your applications. Normally, you should not change the modem’s default settings unless you are sure the changes you are making are correct.
Another option in the modem properties window is the ability to configure your modem’s dialing properties. To do so, choose the Dialing Properties button. A window will appear with a variety of dial-related settings (as shown in Figure 5.27).
The purpose of this dialog box is to configure the phone dialing procedure for placing outgoing calls. For example, if the line from which you are dialing has call waiting, you may want to disable call waiting by checking the appropriate box and choosing the call waiting disable string from the supplied list. If this is a computer that will be used from more than one location (e.g., a laptop computer), you should also use the “I am dialing from” section to define properties for each of the locations. Each location you define can have a entirely different set of dialing properties (different area codes, long-distance dial prefixes, etc.). Use the New button to define new locations.
Monitoring Agent
A new Control Panel Monitoring Agent applet lets system administrators configure several aspects of the Network Monitor Agent, a Windows NT Service used to troubleshoot and diagnose remote network computers. When the Network Monitor Agent service is installed on a Windows NT computer (see the description of the Network applet, for more information about installing network services), an administrator can remotely monitor statistics about network adapters installed on the computer.
Double-clicking the Monitoring Agent icon in the Control Panel displays the Configure Network Monitoring Agent dialog box, which contains three buttons:
Change Password: This button lets you change the passwords used for various levels of access to data captured by the Network Monitor Agent.
Describe Net Cards: This button opens the Describe Net Cards dialog box, which lets you assign one-line descriptions to each of the network adapters installed on the Windows NT computer. These descriptions will appear on the screen of a remote administrator monitoring this computer.
Reset Defaults: This button lets you restore the Network Monitor configuration to its original default settings.
Mouse
The Control Panel’s Mouse applet lets you configure various properties of your mouse. The term mouse includes other pointing devices such as trackballs and pen mice. The Mouse applet is shown in Figure 5.28.
The Mouse applet has four tabbed sections, as described below.
Buttons: The Buttons tab lets you configure several different options, such as whether the mouse is right-hand or left-hand oriented, by switching the functions of the left and right mouse buttons. The mouse’s double-click speed can be also be set here (via a sliding bar that goes from slow to fast), and the speed can be tested by double-clicking the test box in the lower right-hand corner of the dialog box. A successful double-click makes a jack-in-the-box appear or disappear. The faster the double-click speed is set, the faster you’ll need to double-click the mouse’s primary button to have it register.
Pointers: The Pointers (called Cursors in previous versions of Windows NT) tab lets you set the various types of pointers that are used in Windows NT 4.0. Different pointers appear depending on what object or section of the screen the pointer is over. Windows NT supports both animated and nonanimated pointers. You can select pointer schemes via the Scheme drop-down list box, or you can select custom pointers for individual pointer types by highlighting the name of the pointer’s function (at left), choosing Browse, and selecting a pointer to be used for that pointer type. You can also create your own schemes by making all desired pointer customizations and choosing the Save As button.
Motion: The Motion tab lets you set two mouse properties: the speed at which the mouse pointer moves across the screen (via the Pointer speed sliding bar section of the dialog box) and whether or not the pointer should always jump to the default button in any dialog box (set via a check box). The latter feature makes it easy to select default options in dialog boxes quickly.
General: Similar to the Keyboard applet’s General tab, the Mouse General tab is the new location of the Mouse configuration section found in previous versions of Windows NT Setup. This tab lets you select which type of mouse you are using in Windows NT 4.0, which in turn selects the driver Windows NT will use for the mouse.
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