Default SMTP Server in Vista

If you are one of those who are running their development environment in Windows Vista and like to test email code, then you might be disappointed to know that default SMTP server is not included in vista. It used to be a part of Windows XP, but for some good reason Microsoft decided to take it out. The only reason I can think of is that Vista is not intended be used as a production server. It is suggested that developers using Vista in a development environment should target IIS6/Windows Server 2003 or IIS7/Longhorn Server in beta or release form starting next year.

Now, to test the email code there are multiple alternatives proposed over the internet. One of them is to use free smtp server like windows Free SMTP Server  and  SmarterMail

The solution which I opted was to target default virtual SMTP server in Windown Server 2003 which is almost always available as a testing server (local server) in software development houses. In order to successfully relaying an email message, you might need to provide authentication settings. Here is the picture of my settings on Vista to send email to local testing server (sh-sv-1) running windows 2003.

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