The improvements in Exchange 2010 will be felt by both end users and administrators. See "First look: Exchange 2010 beta shines" for my take on the most important ones. The screen images and captions below walk through some of the highlights, from changes in Outlook and Outlook Web Access to continuous database replication for automatic recovery.
Click the image for a closer view.
Outlook Web Access has been improved to incorporate all of the functionality of an Outlook desktop client.
OWA and Outlook 2010 both support voice-mail previews. Note the transcription of the voice-mail created automatically by Exchange 2010.
Users can now create their own server distribution groups.
Users can now obtain delivery reports for their messages, at least within the Exchange server.
Multimailbox searches run asynchronously on the Exchange server.
The results of a multi-mailbox search can be sent to a designated mailbox; they appear as a named folder.
Mailboxes can now be moved live without taking the user offline.
Database Availability Groups use continuous replication to provide automatic recovery and fail-over.