New in Outlook 2003 is the ability to see what Exchange servers Outlook is connected to, as well as other details about those servers and how Outlook is connected to them.

To view this data, hold down the CTRL key and right or left click on the Outlook icon in the system tray (sorry Raymond, I mean the taskbar notification area - it's ingrained!). Select "Connection Status" from that menu, and you'll be able to see:

• The fully qualified domain name of the server you're connecting to
• What role that server plays (mailbox, public folder or directory)
• What local interface you are connecting through (NIC, wireless, etc)
• What protocol the connection is over (TCP/IP, RPC/HTTP)
• If the connection is currently active (and if it's not, you can click a button to force a reconnection)
• The number of requests to that server and the number of those which have failed
• Round-trip times
• For Exchange servers, the version of the server