Outlook 2000 slow to load on Hosted Exchange Server

[jfreer]

Afternoon All -

My company contracted with a 3rd party Exchange Host for our email.
Some of the brokers are running Outlook2000 over WinME (yes, we know
its old!)

I have seen numerous posts on O2K hanging on startup for a few minutes,
and to update the hosts file with the IP of the exchange server to
resolve this. My questions are:

1) Does this work for Hosted Exchange Servers or only Local ones?
2) Do I have to do this on each machine?

Any other ideas? Clients with Outlook2003 work fine. Mailbox sizes are
nothing too large.

Thanks!

jfreer at gmail dot com