University Migrating Students to Windows Live Mail?

An anonymous reader wonders: "My University has begun a migration of student email services to Windows Live Mail. All students will be forced onto the system by the end of the semester, but it doesn't support POP or IMAP. Because of that limitation, the only freely available mail client it supports is Windows Live Desktop, which is only available on Windows and I'm worried its ads might be vulnerable to malware just like the ones in Live Messenger. I depend on my mail client and I am concerned about this, because we're not allowed to forward our mail but are responsible for information received there from the University and classes, I'm not on a Windows machine, and I don't have the time to regularly check for web-mail, during the day." What are the pros and cons of such a move for a mid-sized or large college? If you were in charge of the communications of a such a university, would you outsource [please note the vendor neutrality, here] your e-mail?

Has anyone else's tech department migrated to Windows Live Mail? Why did they make that decision, and how did it work out for the students? For those of us who have already switched our accounts with no way to revert, what ways exist to get around the lack of POP and still use a client? Is there any hope we can get the University to change back or Microsoft to implement POP before the semester's end? How does your University manage their email?"

Contact them

[Nightspirit (846159)]

The program is still in beta (why the university is going with a beta product I have no idea).
Use this form to contact them and tell them what you want (pop, imap support, or whatever).
http://feedback.msn.com/eform.aspx?productkey=mail beta&locale=en-us [msn.com]

Re:Contact them

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is fully aware that any modern email server should support POP and IMAP. But you have to be ignorant of Microsoft's business practices to not see what the facts show -- the program (meant in a general sense) here makes it so one's email is held captive in a Microsoft-only format. Not just your data is captive -- in order to view your data you also have to use a computer running Windows. This is also known as, why the fuck did the United States not complete its prosecution of Microsoft and prevent these illegal business practices. Notice the last: you cannot forward your email. You cannot forward your email. Microsoft does the exact same thing on their Exchange email server -- no email forwarding allowed. But then, you have to know that Microsoft makes its money by charging a tiered price for the amount of data in each account. You won't end up with a lot of data in your account if you forward your email. So, guess what, with Microsoft you do not get to.

You also won't end up locked in.

The correct answer to the student's questions is to go to a different school. Its institution's staff IT people are obviously incompetent or getting kickbacks if they are going with this "solution" that, like Windows Vista (makes XP look like a dream), gets in your way. Microsoft's products are become a severe hinderance to productivity.

Re:Contact them

[lukas84 (912874)]

Exchange can forward email just fine. The Out-of-the-Box config allows this. Outside the organization.

You can also define externals contacts. You can install connectors to view Calendars from Notes Organizations, etc. pp.

Step spewing nonsense.

Re:Contact them

[itwerx (165526)]

what I said was forwarding email going to an Exchange account to another, non-Exchange account

And the GP's reply was correct. Whomever thinks Exchange cannot forward email to an external (non-Exchange) server just doesn't know anything about Exchange, (or how to use Google or the MS-KB either!).
      Not that I'm advocating using Exchange mind you, I still think it sucks/blows majorly for a whole host of reasons, but the above sorts of statements are just painfully ignorant.

Re:

[Jeffrey Baker (6191)]

Wow, that's a hell of a lot easier than echo [e-mail] > ~/.forward. I have seen the light! Exchange is glorious!

Re:

[Angostura (703910)]

The general rule is that any semi-complicated operation mediated through a GUI will appear complex when described textually, but may well be simple to actually carry out. Meanwhile any command line operation will be simple to write down, but often impossible for a neophyte to discover by themselves.

Get what you pay for -- free email hosting from MS

[green pizza (159161)]

My former university moved all 20,000+ student email accounts to Windows Live Mail as well. The reason? Microsoft offered *free* email and web hosting. Everything from the hosting to the migration to advertising the "great new features" of Windows Live Mail across campus were done at Microsoft's expense. There were lots of complaints, but in the end our IT department was able to free up resources (both servers and employees) thanks to Microsoft's new found generosity. How long this will continue, and how long it will remain free, is yet to be seen. For now it seems to be well supported by MS ads and the whole MS Live marketing campaign.

Re:Get what you pay for -- free email hosting from

[bendodge (998616)]

Gmail Gmail Gmail
Free, huge storage, POP3, all kinds of rules you can make, excellent SPAM filtering (way better than MSN), and Google has another service that offers free web hosting.

A new feature being gradually implemented (I think be seniority) is the ability to check other POP3 accounts from Gmail. Gmail also has the best AJAX interface in existence, IMHO.

Re:

[MsGeek (162936)]

Woodbury University migrated its student accounts to Gmail. Very happy about it. Nice to apply Gmail's industrial-strength, nearly infallable Spam filters to my account.

Who needs freaking MS and their "Live*" crap? Apparently not the IT department, whose natural instinct would have been to pile on more MS junk but they went the Gmail route because whatever solution they picked would have had to work on the Macs at WU too.

The Googleplex has made recent decisions I would have to categorize as "evil." However,

yes and no

[oohshiny (998054)]

Outsourcing mail makes sense, but outsourcing to a service that doesn't support POP or IMAP doesn't.

Your university might want to consider outsourcing to Google Mail...

Does Google support IMAP yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

My University [dailynorthwestern.com] is switching to Google. One of my concerns is that I really like my desktop clients (alpine and thunderbird) and prefer IMAP. While gmail is an excellent web-client, I don't really use my gmail account that much, because it doesn't offer IMAP & POP is both "flaky" and limiting.

Does google's hosted service offer IMAP? Or are there plans to in the near future?

Re:Does Google support IMAP yet?

[ibbey (27873)]

Gmail doesn't support IMAP, but they've supported POP for ages. You can happily use a gmail address & never set foot on their website after you set up your account.

Re:

[pato101 (851725)]

Sure. Let me add that you can forward mail to a given address or select if POP retrieval deletes messages at the server or not.
IMAP would make sense, though, since you could access to the gmail account with your favorite client. Nevertheless, since gmail does not use folders (uses labels) I guess they do not offer IMAP because of that lack (heh, they say it is a feature :-P and probably is because their automagic organization of the mail threads )

What are the specific requirements?

[khasim (1285)]

As with any project, you have to determine the specific requirements before you can even THINK of looking at vendors.

#1. Must support pop3 - will test using clients X, Y & Z.

#2. Must support imap - will test using clients X, Y & Z.

#3. Must support 1 & 2 with encryption - will test using clients X, Y & Z.

etc.

It is the requirements that make or break projects. Determine the requirements and how you'll be testing to see if those requirements will be met and THEN you can start looking at which vendors can meet those requirements (and testing to see that they actually DO meet them).

Sounds complicated

[Mateo_LeFou (859634)]

Isn't it easier just to have university policy say "This university best viewed using Internet Explorer"? It could also say "c'mon, everyone uses windows, what are you a communist?"

Re:

[TeknoHog (164938)]

"c'mon, everyone uses windows, what are you a communist?"

It's funny that Americans say 'communism' when they refer to a centrally planned economy in a totalitarian government. Of course, there's nothing centrally planned or totalitarian about everyone using Windows.

Re:yes and no

[Rinisari (521266)]

Utilize the school's student newspaper. Write a letter to the editor, if not a guest editorial. Most editors are cool and will let you write the editorial, as long as you keep it constructive and cite specific examples and sources while keeping it professional and logical. Another option is flyering the campus, but that's a little more difficult at a university of 20,000+ than a college of ~1,500.

Re:yes and no

[Sorthum (123064)]

I do work as a mail admin for a university.

Our boss dismissed the idea of outsourcing to Google or anybody else based SOLELY upon the fact that they reserved the right to advertise in the future to our students. We don't view our students as a commodity to be sold, so that kinda killed the whole "outsource the email" idea.

that's not outsourcing

[oohshiny (998054)]

Google and Microsoft will advertise if you don't pay them, as well they should. Getting a free service from a company isn't "outsourcing".

Outsourcing means you pay market rates for the service. Then, your students won't be subjected to advertising.

(As an aside, the ads are easy to kill.)

Uh, complain?

[suso (153703)]

Don't waste your time asking about it on Slashdot. You should be writing to the president of your University and make him aware of your concerns. If they don't change, transfer to another college.

Re:Uh, complain?

[maynard (3337)]

Uhhh. Why should he bother changing university (and job) over IT email policy? Even if he doesn't like the email service, doesn't run Windows, and won't ever use it - why does that warrant transfer to a new school? Perhaps there are other compelling reasons why he might want to stay. For example, he has a girlfriend there; he has a good relationship with a certain professor who is willing to help his career path; he might lose transfer credits in the process; etc etc etc.

Your suggestion seems a tad excessive, IMO.

Re:

[modecx (130548)]

Uhhh. Why should he bother changing university (and job) over IT email policy? Even if he doesn't like the email service, doesn't run Windows, and won't ever use it - why does that warrant transfer to a new school?

I would probably think about it if I were in this position, and weren't especially attached to that school, and here's why: an action as poorly thought out as this one is surely not the only silly thing the school has done or will do in the near future. In other words, stupidity is almost positiv

Re:

[aardvarkjoe (156801)]

In other words, stupidity is almost positively endemic to the culture of the university...

Stupidity is positively endemic to the culture of any university.

Re:

[dal20402 (895630)]

Speaking as one of those "average students"...

1. Webmail, of any sort (including gmail), is annoying to use. No matter how sophisticated your javascript/AJAX tricks are, you can't make a webmail interface as sensible or responsive as that of an ordinary desktop mail client.

2. Most of us have university and non-university accounts. If we use webmail, we either have to forward messages from one account to the other (exactly what the OP is complaining he can't do with his harebrained Windows Live setup), o

Re:Uh, complain?

[gnud (934243)]

Guys, why is every Ask Slashdot item answered with "dont waste your time on slashdot, instead go bug $some_seemingly_appropriate_person". If that is you attitude, just dont read any "Ask Slashdot" threads. Perhaps he just wants ammunition for his blazing letter to the university board =)

Re:

[Heir Of The Mess (939658)]

You can't be serious. Goddam, people have it so good these days. When I was at uni all our e-mail was on a VMS system and I had to actually go onto the campus site and access it through a VT100 terminal. If I wanted to read my e-mail at home I had take it home on paper after printing it out on a dot matrix line printer that normally had about 2 days worth of jobs queued up ahead of me. With this kind of thing we just put up and shut up. You can't let trivial things make big decisions for you.

Now maybe if t

Which university?

[DoofusOfDeath (636671)]

Which university?

Re:

[ill_conditioned (529750)]

He is talking about the University of Idaho most likely. They are currently migrating students to live, and this same discussion just came up in our LUG discussion group just the other day. Students who oppose the change have been quick to blame the university ITS department, when really this is a product of their student government (ASUI) and the state's yearly budget cuts to the University.

Re:

[aardvarkjoe (156801)]

Students who oppose the change have been quick to blame the university ITS department, when really this is a product of their student government (ASUI) and the state's yearly budget cuts to the University.

Well, it certainly is the fault of the IT department that students aren't allowed to either forward their e-mail, or specify an address of their choice for official university communication. Neither one of those cost anything, and would solve these problems.

Re:

[arth1 (260657)]

Not many colleges or universities have particularly low quotas anymore, and exceptionally few bounce mail when you hit such a quota.

Any quota is a particularly low quota. If one is set at all, it's with the expectation that it will be hit -- why else set it?

As for bouncing (or worse), that depends on whether the quota is hard or soft, and whether it is set at system level or application level. If on the latter, yes, a system can still accept e-mail, but if the former, the MTA has no other recourse than to

POP access

[Reason58 (775044)]

A quick google brought this [reaper-x.com] up on the first page of results.

Re:POP access

[elysian1 (533581)]

I've been using Thunderbird and the WebMail add-on for months now with my Live Mail account. Just download the WebMail extension and the Hotmail extension here: http://webmail.mozdev.org/installation.html [mozdev.org] After you have it installed it, go here for how to set up webmail: http://webmail.mozdev.org/setup.html [mozdev.org] Then, to make it work with Live Mail, go to Thunderbird's Add-ons menu and click the options button for Hotmail. You might need to add a new domain (probably your school's domain). Then go to the accounts tab and select Hotmail Website (BETA) mode for the new domain you've created. That should do it.

Ludicrous, idiotic, stupid, corrupt

[SpaceLifeForm (228190)]

Well, those are my immediate thoughts.

When word gets out what University is comtemplating
this, well, I would not want to be associated with
the decision.

No POP service?

[HomelessInLaJolla (1026842)]

One could write a shell script to negotiate the HTTP transactions with wget and pipe the resulting pages through a series of filters to strip away the page cruft (ads, navbars, menus, etc.) and the HTML tags and leave only the message text which could be inserted into standard system /var/mail files. After the shell script was sufficiently defined one could use the source code of wget, the source code of HTML libs, the source code of a mail daemon, and a little innovative C glue and write a formal local Windows Live Mail retrieval tool. Once the custom tool achieves any sort of popularity, though, then MS will begin to change the page formats subtly to confound the stripping filters. Then it'll be another radar race.

Why can't they just offer POP service to those who want it?

Re:No POP service?

[wile_e8 (958263)]

Why can't they just offer POP service to those who want it?

Because then you could use non-Microsoft products to access your mail.

My experience as a student and campus IT admin.

[jerbenn (903795)]

I work at a mid-size university and we outsource student email services to a state run provider. From my experience as both an IT admin and a student, I find that most student's don't use their campus provided email anyway......rather resorting to using their own personal accounts with hotmail, google, etc... The wise thing to do in my opinion is provide some sort of email service (outsourced is fine) for the small percent of students who actually use it, and allow student's to submit their own email addresses to the campus database.......which would then get loaded into the 'official' campus address book for use by faculty and other students.......

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

The disadvantage of having official registered student e-mail addresses among many different domains/providers is that you have really no assurance that each message will get to the right person. Yes, you can verify that an official campus message left whatever server it's hosted on, but you can't verify that someone at another provider ever actually had the message delivered to their account.

I don't understand the problem with having a universal campus-hosed e-mail service. They have servers accessible to

Please check out Thunderbird

[Anonymous Coward]

I have used Thunderbird against the hotmail client of Windows Live Mail. Thunderbird has a webmail addon, that supports hotmail and the Live Mail beta. I haven't tried it on non-Windows machines, but I see no reason it shouldn't work.

Good luck.

So basically they don't provide e-mail

[iamacat (583406)]

Just open a gmail account, forward e-mail from Windows Live and use the free POP.

You have my sympathy

[dan dan the dna man (461768)]

I work at a University where Exchange dominates proceedings, like many other institutions. Watching staff and students stampede away from it when they realise there is an IMAP alternative when they are told about it (fine yes Exchange supports IMAP but the Uni's implementation does not) is quite heartening.

If they tried this at my institution there would be riots quite frankly - does everyone in your CS department run Windows? Even in the Biology departments not everyone runs Windows! I certainly couldn't accept this kind of situation occurring for staff, so I wouldn't therefore accept it occurring for students. In a world where the concept of choice is so readily bandied about as being 'a good thing' this is a retrograde step, regardless of who the vendor is.

Of course many of the students and staff already forward their email en masse to Gmail and either store it/deal with it there..

Sounds Dubious

[moehoward (668736)]

I am skeptical of your question/issue. I strongly suggest that you post a link to your institution's new policy. Or, post the policy here yourself. Your description is so "worst-case-scenario", that I have too many doubts. University's are not completely stupid and you have framed this as a "dumb-big-institution" gripe. I mean, your question is framed so that there is no possible answer. It seems to be a setup for a bunch of anti-MS posts and "what's-a-poor-student-to-do" grandstanding.

Also, if what you say is true then you can always get a free (as in beer) bot that will provide any auto-forward capabilities that Windows Live may not (or may) provide.

Re:Sounds Dubious

[Saeculorum (547931)]

One such institution that has conducted such a change is the University of Idaho [uidaho.edu]. The information is available here [uidaho.edu]. The ITS department has further clarified that they aren't even going to support Windows Live Mail Desktop (which is also in beta).

I wish they would outsource!

[Attacked by Snakes (11522)]

I'm at a university in DC and they are also talking about outsourcing student's mail either to Yahoo or Google. They're starting the trials soon and there are a number of good reasons for it. Currently students are limited to 250 MB of mail which can be a problem when you're sending papers back and forth to your group paper. Also, they are currently using Lotus Notes webmail and it's horrible to use on the web, regularly failing and being generally backward in its use. Webmail clients like the new Yahoo

Outsource to Microsoft?!?

[cazbar (582875)]

If I were in a position of authority over a University network, would I outsource the email? Absolutely.

Would I outsource it to Microsoft? Not a chance in hell.

I'd find a company whose primary focus is email. That way I could expect some kind of service.

Virtual machine

[cerberusss (660701)]

You don't have the time to check mail in a webbased client, but it's no problem to leave a standard client running?

I find that somewhat funny. I think the real problem is that you hate it that they force a way of working onto you, which as an added benefit runs on the Evil Empire's platform.

My solution would be to run a virtual machine at home using VMWare, Xen or something. At the Uni, there will be enough Windows boxes available.

Google Apps

[physicsphairy (720718)]

Google Apps for Education [google.com]

2GB of space. POP3. Spam filtering. Cost? $0.

I use a .forward file at my school just because the local mail is so unreliable (downtime, messages lost, etc.). Even *that* has been a liability when they have managed to crash their RAID array and not have a backup. That was when final projects were due, too. And they limit us to 250 megabytes total on the system. Oh how I yearn for the day they will here my humble petitions and switch to Google Apps.

State university; needs of professors

[davidwr (791652)]

If it is a state-run university you may be able to slow the process down by using public pressure or lobbying. Write your state lawmakers. Cite issues like "unfairly giving one company the upper hand at the expense of others" and "forcing students to view ads as a course requirement" etc. If you are lucky, you may find their actions violate state law, although I doubt that's the case.

Talk to professors. Some of them may be running projects which require that certain information never leave the school campus except over secure channels. Or they simply might not want to send certain information anywhere within 1000 miles of Redmond. Find out who they are and have them lobby to change the requirement.

Also find professors and students who are anti-monopoly and anti-forced-advertisements. There should be plenty of them in the School of Liberal Arts. Get them to lobby also.

Given that the decision has already been made, it's probably too late for you. I hope these suggestions help others whose schools are considering outsourcing functions to unrelated entities.

When it comes to educational IT outsourcing of just about anything other than consumer software, I recommend:

• Have a contingency plan if the outsourcing arrangement doesn't work out or the outsourcing partner quits or folds
  
• Buy a white-label solution, with the University's brand on it and no paid advertising unless each ad is university-approved, and no paid ads in IT environments students or employees are required to use. Instead of "GMail," it's "MyUMail."
  
• In ad-free areas, only a discreet mention of who the vendor actually is
  
• All university data is segregated from the vendor's other customer's data
  
• All sensitive data is encrypted to/from the campus or to/from the campus-affiliated person's computer
  
• Only certain vendor employees are allowed access to the data, and then only as needed to do their jobs
  
• Take extra precautions with information related to identity, grades, payroll, class schedule, and other potentially sensitive information. If email and file-storage is outsourced, be aware that employees and students may put others' sensitive information on that space as part of their jobs or classwork. This data needs to be protected as it would be if the data and its backups were controlled by the University.
  

Vendor-neutrality

[frisket (149522)]

Any institution which forces users to buy one specific platform just in order to read mail has its head so far up its ass that it might just as well climb up in after it and disappear.

Even in my own institution, which is slavishly Microsoft-dominated, both student email and faculty/staff email are accessible from any platform. Not necessarily optimally -- OWA is probably the suckiest email interface ever devised -- but no-one is placed in the position of not being able to read college email just because they happen to use a Mac, or a Sun, or a Linux box.

It's an education/training problem: most Windows users are only very dimly aware that anything else exists: they may have heard of Apple Macs but probably not of Linux. They've certainly never seen or used anything except Windows, and are thus completely baffled and uncomprehending at the concept of someone who is not a Windows user.

When that species of ignorance exists at decision-making level, you will get people making unwise decisions because they are simply unaware that any problem exists. If they are already that badly brainwashed, then recommendations for alternative action from lower down the food chain will have no effect, because they lack the cognitive hooks on which further information can hang.

Re:Boo Hoo

[jcr (53032)]

Thanks for that enlightening perspective, Mr. Ballmer.

-jcr

Re:

[praseodym (813457)]

It doesn't force him to use Windows, there's webmail for that. But the only desktop email client (Live Mail Desktop) works only on Windows.