Microsoft exchange server with Mail

Does anyone know if you can access a Microsoft Exchange server using Mail?
If not, is there any alternative?

You can use Mail with exchange only if the server admins enabled IMAP. I have looked high and low and have yet to find a MAPI client for anything other than Windows. I believe the problem is that once again M$ went with their own protocol and APIs rather than using standard protocols and they haven't released the details of MAPI.

If you have MS Entourage or Novell Evolution (there's one particular Mac version that works and it is legally free), you can use that provided the admins enabled Outlook Web Access (basically WebDAV). I found both to not work that well compared to Outlook using MAPI. One big headache was the GAL was accessed via LDAP in Entourage and I never got it to work in Evolution.

This is the main reason I run Windows via Parallels - so I can run Outlook since exchange has been shoved down my throat. We used to use a STANDARD mail server with IMAP, but noooo...that wasn't good enough to allow choice by sticking with standard protocols....but I'm not bitter.

thanks for the info.
How can i find out if the server admins have enabled IMAP.
I have ordered Office for mac which comes with Entourage, so i should be OK.

ask them. you'll need the settings info from them, especially if they enable SSL/TLS

imap in exchange is not turned on by default, so they would have had to make a conscious decision to enable it and a lot of companies don't.