Exchange 03 – Mail to public folders

I’m putting forward this question because Microsoft is yet to fully support Exchange 2003 in its knowledge base.
The problem is when mail from the internet comes directly into a public folder it arrives in the folder as a note item. This makes replying impossible. Sending an email internally to the folder does not change the email into a note item.
We found a Knowledge base article that hits VERY close to the mark for Exchange 2000. Article 292484. The symptoms are nearly identical but there is no supporting article for Exchange 2003 to be found. We tried doing the registry entry anyway (mentioned in article 292484) but without success. The other suggested solutions are in no way a clean fix (sending to a another folder and using a rules wizard to send correctly).
Has this happened to anyone else and what did you do to fix it up properly??