Messaging program for office or LAN/WAN?

Infopackets Reader Robert F. writes:

" Dear Dennis,

I really find your newsletters to be interesting and of great help -- keep up the good work! I want to set up an office and be able to email my secretary and have her reply to the email without having an Internet connection as I don't need the internet in the business.

Do you know of a program that would let me do this? I own a Dell PC and talked to a technician, but they didn't have a suggestion for me. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated! "

My response:

The simple answer is that email is designed to run on the Internet, so you won't be able to send emails to your secretary if you don't have an Internet connection -- or, unless you build a local web server and configure your email programs to reroute letters through the local mail (web) server. This is obviously a technical and expensive solution and is therefore not recommended.

One suggestion you might want to try is a freeware LAN chat client or some type of messaging service. This will essentially achieve the same affect as email; however, depending on the solution you use, it may / may not be possible to sort or archive information. Therefore, this solution may prove difficult when it comes time to retrieve information.

Side note: The acronym LAN stands for Local Area Network, and is a "local area network: a local computer network for communication between computers; especially a network connecting computers and word processors and other electronic office equipment to create a communication system between offices." (Source: princeton.edu) Similarly, WAN stands for "Wide Area network"; the Internet, by definition, is a WAN.

As an alternative suggestion, you might want to check out a program called Stickynote. A while back, a review was written in our newsletter and it provides the messaging service that you want, plus the ability to archive and sort information (as I suggest). From the review:

" StickyNote creates beautiful 3D virtual reminders on Windows desktop, making it easy to keep track of important notes and reminders ...

'Note-ify' friends and colleagues over your network or the Internet. The notes pop up right on your friend's desktop, just as looks like on your PC ... Other features include: attach relevant files to a note, synchronize contact information, customize the appearance of notes by topic, set alarms based on notes to avoid missing deadlines, and more. "

To read the review of Stickynote in its entirety, refer to this link (also includes a slide-show so you can see how it works):

StickyNote 9 Review