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?"

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Sounds complicated

[Mateo_LeFou]

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:Uh, complain?

[Heir Of The Mess]

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 they didn't sell my favorite beer in the university bar at breakfast then I might have considered trying to change.

Re:Contact them

[Jeffrey Baker]

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

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

[Silas is back]

Not only does Google get to store your e-mails, all the slashdot ads (by Google) are mapped with the gmail account, all your searches are mapped with the gmail account etc etc. Essentially, google gets to store which sites you go to, what searches you do and so on.

Great! I hope Google uses my data to one day provide me free links to porn I might really like! What a service!