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

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

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

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.

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

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.

yes and no

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...

What are the specific requirements?

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

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:yes and no

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

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

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?

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?

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:Uh, complain?

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 =)

POP access

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

Re:POP access

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

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?

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?

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.

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.......

Please check out Thunderbird

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.

Sounds Dubious

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

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).

State university; needs of professors

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

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

Thanks for that enlightening perspective, Mr. Ballmer.

-jcr