Slashdot Mirror
Windows Live Goes to College
Tobias writes "BetaNews is reporting that Microsoft has struck a deal with 72 different colleges to use Windows Live for their email services. The problem with this is that Windows Live does not support any browsers besides IE 6, does not support POP or IMAP, and does not support email forwarding." From the article: "The Redmond company believes that catching the students early on will turn them into life-long users of Windows Live. They would likely create a Windows Live Messenger account, start a blog and organize their favorites under this e-mail account -- especially if they plan to continue using it, Microsoft says."
Can they do that?
From the article:
"But although there has been a rapid uptake of the service, the company says it still meets resistance and skepticism. In return, Microsoft has been assuring education institutions that its only motivation is to get students using Windows Live, promising there are no ulterior plans."
Funnypics
until they slip some cash to some people who then make it a mandatory part of the "college experience". Reminds me of the tobacco companies, "hook 'em while they're young".
I am not sure were that IE6 only blurb came from.
Windows Live does not support any browsers besides IE 6, does not support POP or IMAP
So, why did they do this? This mail service sounds like garbage (no offense MS). I can't use any standard email client with it.
Via an easy Google or even Live search, the article submitter could have found out that Windows Live supports Firefox in addition to Internet Explorer 6 and 7 Beta.
What does this have to do with replacing school mail servers with the Windows Live service?
And the one that Microsoft just can never seem to grasp, and probably the reason why so many people just don't want anything to do with them, is that there always has to be a hook.
Some might argue that Google have a hidden agenda (and no-one has quite worked out what that is yet) but with their offerings such as their GMail for Businesses, regular GMail, Calendar, etc there isn't a 'hook' - its just there. You use it, you don't - You like it, you don't - so what.
With Microsoft its always something like "We want to get people to be lifelong users" or "We reserve the right to turn on adverts when people graduate" - there is always a caveat or other reason rather than "This is a damn good product - we think it will sell itself".
I can't wait to be rid of Windows at home and just be done with Microsoft.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
I signed up to use the hotmail live beta, and it takes FOREVER to reload the screen.. gmail refreshes just about instantly..
Also, I can't even see my folders - after using hotmail live for about a minute, the folders section is reduced to about 1mm in size.... also, when you are reading EVERY email, there is an AD right next to the email reading window - and so you are forced to read that stupid ad with every email that you read...
msn/hotmail live SUX! they are just trying badly to copy gmail! maybe their servers are clogged up or something to explain the bad refresh speed...
http://www.psychopanic.com
...any college that would sign this sort of exclusivity deal probably doesn't have much in the way of, oh, how shall we say, a progressive-minded fast-paced cutting-edge technological studies / computer science department - by which I mean that this list of 72 colleges (which I don't believe was published - I skimmed TFA) is more likely to be "Ben Doke's Midtown College of Applied Farm Machineary" and "Oral Roberts God Fearing U" and 70 other semi-community colleges than it is "M.I.T." and "UC-Berkeley" and other notable names from the Ivy League and Division I-A - and students who'd attend the sort of college that would sign a deal as stupid and moronic as this are probably the sorts who'll be happily locked into Windows anyway, for the rest of the foreseeable future. Or the mildly sociopathic types who'll get a perverse thrill out of signing up for distance learning Web CT classes, then informing the instructor that they won't be able to check their validated campus email because they run Linux ;)
So, uh, all hype, and it's sorta nerdy - but does it matter?
drops out freshman year, forms harmless little start-up to develop webOS, and goes on to take over the world.
tidokoro
what turns a man's karma neutral? lust for gold? power? or just a heart born full of neutrality?
That is a rather big set of problems...
How many corporate environments as well as universities (and students, too) are still using older versions of IE?
How many students want to be locked into using a web interface exclusively, especially when they use Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird, Pine, Elm... as their preferred mail client? Its a bigger problem when you have students who only use Macs or Linux and refuse to touch Microsoft products.
Of course, how many students just have their
At this time, it seems like Microsoft is copying Google's idea of doing organizational email hosting, but without the choice of platforms and other niceness.
Navicula hydraulica plena anguilarum est. Omnes castelli tuus nostri sunt. Ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
>> The Redmond company believes that catching the students early on will turn them into life-long users of Windows Live
.. if you love someone, set them free? :)
Who was it that said
It's things like this which governments should be keeping a close eye on, not bundled media players. Bundling a media player doesn't lock you in; keeping protocols changing and closed (in this case ActiveX) does.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
Web mail is great if you want an email where you can filter spam or from those porn site you don't tell your wife about.
It's not nearly as good as an e-mail client where you can organize, flag, set rules, mark certain domains with colors bla bla. Also, who wants to refresh the page every x minutes to check for email, or have it reloading and wasting a IE page or tab in firefox/opera whatever when you can just have a small client open and every x minute goes and checks for messages. And the lack of forwarding sucks. What if you want to forward yesterday's notes to your lab partner(s) because he was out sick? Not supporting POP? I'm not sure that's such a big deal, unless it means it doesn't have a pop server that you can't log into. If that's true then see my above comments.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
Does anyone have a link to the list of schools who are planning on implementing this?
There is a case that governments should rule that no college which receives any kind of taxpayer funding should be allowed to mandate the use of a product from one particular company to its students, but don't hold your breath waiting.
Pining for the fjords
Windows Live Goes to College
About time somebody went to college... I hear the founder was a dropout
I love humanity, it is people I hate
"...... Microsoft has struck a deal with 72 different colleges to use Windows Live for their email services ....."
Inspite of all the hull-a-boo and pick-panicking, herein lies crux of the matter.. 72 colleges already under the umbrella with many more sure to follow suit. And even if we take a majority of 'em to be just run-of-mill, wanting to be associated someway or the other with MS, a good number must have endorsed it on its merit (the majority of us not being able to find (m)any, though!). Damn.... what'd i do to learn marketing at Redmond.
Do they really think they're going to compete with gmail that late in the kids' lives?
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
And cigarettes... Hook em while they are young, and you have them for life.
:(
MS, used to be "good" used to be the underdog taking on IBM and Big Iron. Bringing affordable computing to the little guy, breaking the Vender Lock In (tm)...
"Whoever battles monsters should take care not to become a monster too, for if you stare long enough into the Abyss, the Abyss stares also into you."
--Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, chapter 4, no. 146
Its a shame, really it is...
Just like flooding schools with Apple Mac's in the 90's converted sooooo many to apple [/sarcasim].
based on my early experience I have always thought apple had the superior OS. I still suspect that it is. But most of my work and home OS is windows with a little linux. I think that early experience might have a small effect on long term market share but waaay less than marketers seem to believe.
A lot of students I see in our college has a MAC and a lot more using Firefox! And these students are pretty smart, they know what they want! So please M$, no more cheap salesman tactics!
Scott McNealy to Michael: "Suck my Sun!" Michael Dell to Scott : "Lick my Dell!"
"The Redmond company believes that catching the students early on will turn them into life-long users of Windows Live"
...how long will Windows Live live?
Life-long users? Given Microsoft's history of online services, the next question has to be...
Most students will welcome this.
Most dont know or want to know what pop/smtp/imap are
The Windows Live mail interface is looking pretty good.
And most importantly they will be able to take their email
address with them when they graduate.
The university doesn't have to provide the email service
saving IT money for wireless networks etc
You heard me.
If this is what they believe then people on AOL/Hotmail wouldn't have shifted to other web email providers. I personally shifted to Yahoo mail when it came and then to GMail. Call me fickle but I know a good service when I use one.
The best planning can be done after the project completes.
Windows live compatibility (from the MS Human Interfaces Group internal sharepoint page). Sorry I'm posting as an a.i. -- I haven't signed an NDA, but still, I'm a'feared.
"Supported Browsers: IE 6.0 and above and Firefox (latest point release)*
Non-Supported Browsers: Opera and Safari
Windows Live is optimized for IE 6.0. Firefox rendering technologies provide an experience nearly identical to IE5.5, so pages designed for IE 5.5 should look good in Firefox as well. Technologies not supported in IE 6.0 may not be used when designing for Windows Live.
In many cases, pages rendered in non-supported browsers will display well, but resources should not be expended on changing designs so that they will work on non-supported browsers.
Ideally, people using non-supported browsers receive an acceptable user experience. This may mean that we display a simplified page on non-supported browsers so that users can access key functionality.
* Because Firefox is not consistent between releases, we can only guarantee to support the latest release (not all releases going forward)."
Just say no!
The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity....Calvin
I seem to recall another company that focused on getting into schools, hoping to get children familiar with their products and thus have them become lifelong users.
I know there are a lot of Mac users on slashdot (including myself) but how many people really started using macs in school and just never bothered to learn anything else?
The problem with this line of thinking is that technology moves too fast for this to really be effective. Someone starting at one of those 70 Universities today will, in the 4 to 6 years it takes them to graduate, go from either liking or hating this new thing, to being tired of the lame old software the University uses and looking to the next new thing.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
Safari is Microsoft's recommended browser for Mac users, since they stopped supporting IE 5.2 Mac. I don't see how the can not support it.
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
Sometimes I got the feeling that you slashdotters are expressing your helplessness regarding the "wonderful world of m$" - and keep using windows. Don't like it? Drop it! You can't say that there's no alternative! (none of my computers are running windows)
No POP? No IMAP? IE only?
Oh, man. I can just imagine the reaction if my University tried to bring in something like this. It wouldn't just be the Software Libre lunatic fringe objecting -- we have a lot of fairly technically-capable students who like to read and store their mail on their laptops, and they'd howl the place down. Even the relatively technically unclued around here do their browsing with Firefox.
Mac users would particularly hate it, especially considering Microsoft's recent statements regarding IE on OSX.
It is a woman's prerogative to change other people's minds.
I know I only go to the local shitty community college, but even so, most of the people going there are too damn dumb to know there's much of anything else out there besides regular hotmail, yahoo, and aol - and its not some hick town either, more like one of the suburbs (one of the nicer ones, might I add) around Phoenix, AZ - afaik one of the biggest growing cities in the US...
.....does not support POP or IMAP, and does not support email forwarding.....
I s'pose that if I were at one of these schools, I would take one glance at it, decide that it's a valiant effort but incompatible with the world at large in a typically-for-MS sort of way, and not use it.
Meaning I'd probably be locked out of communicating with 90%+ of my peers (who are invariably less picky and don't mind (or notice?) being locked into being life-long users of one specific application).
Which is why I have about 3 friends. So all of the above is more or less immaterial (but nonetheless now captured for posterity).
"Good news, everyone!"
Nothing much else to say, except the poster obviously has a thing against God Fearing people and those who work on Farms. What either has to do with email, I have no clue.
Where is the list of the 72 colleges to avoid? I don't think it's too late to change my decision...
the GP doesn't say that the farmers and religious loonies^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsheep are bad people - he just says that they're the ones most likely to stick with Windows regardless of what exclusive deals Microsoft pulls.
Are you from Tuttle?
ummm ... I think I've read this before. I mean seriously. I read this exact comment before sometime. Do you work for M$? I mean, do they pay you to write this? It's ok, you can tell us. Maybe someone can hook you up with something else.
Nyhetsankaret.com -- det bÃsta av Sveriges Nyhetssido
While people can rant and rave about lock in and the evil Microsoft empire, there are at least some positives here that are worth considering.
Compliance with current standards is the bane of todays email. The services and protocols currently in place have turned email from a useful tool into a technological sesspit. Vendors are all working on patching their products, or offering extra 'value add' services, and yet we still have viruses and spam.
Universities and colleges have some responsibility to provide access to a safe environment for their students. Given the costs and complexities of doing this using the current open standard technology, it's not surprising they are looking at a service outside of that box.
Someone had to try doing something - thinking outside the box - the only problem here is that peoples distaste for Microsoft seems to have coloured the debate.
It's one thing to bag Microsoft and the Colleges for doing this - it's another to come up with a better way.
I'm just as adent a capitalist as the next fellow, but Microsoft's products - and their total lack of class - really just sickens me. I hate to see an American success story implode, but I really hope that company dies the awful death it so richly deserves.
A uni's CS department has absolutely no relation to the general mail services, or student network, of the university. Whether the CS department is badly managed or wonderfully managed, they will likely hate the people who run the main network if it's anything like my experience.
My uni has a decent CS department, who run everything for their department themselves. We have access to their solaris machines and we have all of the normal mail (POP3/IMAP/SMTP) services, and can SSH to the machines etc. etc.
The university however (and anyone on any other course) has to make use of crappy Novell Netware webmail. I could easily see them moving to this new MS system if the managers high up in the IT department were sent enough free copies of Office by MS, or whatever they are bribing them all with.
When this list is published, expect to see a lot of top uni's with deccent CS departments in there. And whether or not they have a decent CS department or not, we can't say "oh it's ok, they don't have MIT so it doesn't mean anything" - MS are still going to be forcing literally hundreds of thousands of upcoming young adults into only knowing their own proprietary system.
Microsoft has been assuring education institutions that its only motivation is to get students using Windows Live, promising there are no ulterior plans.
The history of microsoft and the fact firefox users are doomed to use a basic service of windows live: They can't convince me.
Such a service should not depend on the browser you use.
At the RWTH Aachen we get an email account on the email servers of the university - alright, the university has to pay money for the servers and maintainers... if a university doesn't want to pay that price, they just might store your personal email adress in their database to reach you, but THIS is ridiculous! forcing you to use a miserable service is just plain stupid... these universities must have gotten lots of money because noone would accept such a poor offer voluntarily
but seriously, MS, you don't need to get people at the age of 20-30 years... if you don't have them already at that age, you won't ever get them - especially not with a poor service that doesn't support POP/IMAP/forwarding...
the only thing you'll reach is pissing people off by forcing them into your narrow-minded "there is nothing in the world but MS" system
but of course as a GNU/Linux user, I'm the enemy - you won't listen to me, although you should, because I switched only few month ago, so I'm a person that still knows why he switched and doesn't hate you dogmatic... and this forcing students into using cheap crap (I say again: no pop/imap/forwarding, so these words are funded) is another reason for me to never use your products again, because it once again shows perfectly that you're evil...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
You wouldn't believe how many whiny-assed excuses you hear, but if you really want to make a difference, you have to make a change.
Nuthin' but Debian at my house!
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I don't get it...
How does Microsoft plan to make these students into lifelong users after they've actually used the service?
bkd
"The Redmond company believes that catching the students early on will turn them into life-long users of Windows Live"
Early? They would have to strike deals with kindergartens to do that.
The Redmond company believes that catching the students early on will turn them into life-long users of Windows Live.
That's how KGB recruited Philby, Burgess, Maclean and Blake. Good luck Bill. You'll need it more than I do.
If your prof is handing out assignments and other stuff via email, and the only way to read it is via this Windows Live crap, then yes, they really can compete. If those kids won't use Windows Live and can't use Gmail for their school stuff, they'll likely be flunking out. Now, it would be interesting to see what the school would do if an entire year flunked out because of this, but somehow I think the kids will fold before the school does.
> The Redmond company believes that catching the students early on will turn them into life-long users of Windows Live.
And the Redmond company is just so right. Just see how many students who discovered computing at home, using Microsoft Word and Microsoft Windows, became skilled at using these softs, and how hard it is to market OpenOffice.org to one of those, despite it does everything they need. Capturing the users very early is one of the basics of marketting, my banker knows it. Make a nice offer to the student which promises to become a good'ol' father with many kids consumming lots of foo bar, is the recipe for success.
Bundling a media player doesn't lock you in
Actually, it really does. More accurately, it doesn't lock the user in, but it locks the competition out. First, many users are too disinterested or technically unskilled to install other media players and will default to whatever is preinstalled. Second, in business environments, many users do not have administrative rights on their computers, and either I.T. will not install media players or it is a hard enough process that the users will again, fall back to what's preinstalled. This creates a tremendously difficult environment for any competition.
Who (the hell) would use web mail account which doesn't have at least forwarding (and no way to have alternate access)? This reminds me of the lockdown that OutlookExpress had(still has). Soon, many programs appeared which could back up and migrate mail and acocunt settings another windows install or mail agent. I guess someone will make a "Live" parser which will fetch that data anyway.
Unfortunately, many unsuspecting students will not see the lock-in problem until they try to switch, or want to have mail delivered to local mail agent. Others (avg. slashdot user) will stay far away from Windows Live.
Most of these replys are quite negative (heh, its ok :P) but surely there must be some good from this (somewhere). My uni uses Exchange servers to run the email system, which of course is fully featured -- but comes with a pretty hefty pricetag (I'd imagine, i dont *really* know). So if these colleges are infact smaller US ones, then I'd imagine there is a large discount.
There is one very useful thing: keeping your email after you leave. I will lose my email address when I leave as the university cannot support x thousand (hardly used I'd imagine) old email accounts - then again they are tied with logon accounts so could be tricky. However, I use gmail so all should be alright -- as long as go to tell everyone.
One person commented about having to check their email at least once a day - and thus people would be forced to use Live - but at the moment I don't know how many people have admin access to the [shared] university owned computers to install mail clients... I certainly don't and all of the students here need to use Outlook. Or the Outlook web interface (which also is FF limited). There's already no choice... At home however, you do have more options of course.
Given enough demand will M$ edit their software to include forwarding [at the account level] ?
One day I wish to try out this Live thing, but look! its not available in the UK yet......
, , , , , karma elon
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
FTFP:
does not support POP or IMAP
SMTP is irrelevant here. You don't use SMTP to get mail, just to send it.
...but if you attend one of the colleges that's being changed over you really don't have much choice in the matter.
You would think that eventually M$ would understand this, but the problem is, their whole business model is based on manipulation through lock-in. Hence the reason privacy has driven them crazy since day one. I am actually pretty bored with M$. I don't even look at any of their products and I just don't even bother with anything made by them because I know there is a better alternative available elsewhere and with fewer strings attached.
The idea that M$ can offer a product that is so revolutionary and good that no one can offer a competitive alternative is laughable. M$ loses. Gmail runs just beautifully on Firefox. Why does M$ even bother to bring some piece of crap to the market when it can't even run on the platforms an already existing decent product does.
That smacks of arrogance, stupidity, or something worse.
I work in a large (many say prestigious) hospital where they use Windows 2K terminals to access patient records, labs, X-rays, page doctors, order tests, etc. These are not only mission critical functions, but potentially life critical. Every time a decent worm/virus rolls around, the computer system become unusable and we are left in the dark so to speak (take this in to account the next time you write a worm you damn script kiddies). It is truly scary when this happens because the backup systems are paper, sneaker and phone based.
It amazes me that the hospital IT department continues to use Windows, especially since most of the functions are web based. Unfortunately, the programs only work on IE. I keep hoping that they decide to switch away from Windows before something truly bad happens.
Once the universities go through a few worm/virus cycles where they can't access the system (either because of server or client side problems) for a few days, they might reconsider their choice.
bad choice for innovation.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
So these universities aren't going to provide students with something as basic as email anymore? This doesn't support any established email standards, so isn't email. It's a proprietary messenging service like there used to be in the 1970s, and should be referred to as such.
MS's first move was to partner with IBM when they released DOS. They were on the side of big iron.
stuff |
Splendid!
You're right, this has been reposted pretty often and all over the place. Almost always by an anonymous coward.
Search results here
Hope the fool takes you up on your kind offer. Or just gets a life.
... And we will win the guys/gals back as soon as they hit the internet ...
Read radical news here
Live.com works fine in firefox. I think the submitter should try it out before they make claims.
nothing
I'd guess it doesn't have SMTP anyway, since its stated objective is to lock people into the Windows Live email system, and allowing email to be delivered to a system outside the monopoly just doesn't fit that model.
ies4linux is a simple Bash Script program that installs Internet Explorer 6, 5.5 and 5 on Linux using Wine. The whole process is automatic and very easy.
I've got IE6 installed on Gentoo, and it runs... well, it runs well enough to let me test web pages I'm developing. It also loads mail.live.com after only crashing 2 or 3 times. *shrug*
<:
[College I went to], or rather, its administrators:
Chose Pepsi over Coke without consulting Food Services; their increase in cost far outweighed the "benefits" that Pepsi gave to the campus: vending machines, advertisements thinly veiled as programs and concerts.
Chose [Expensive Email System] without consulting the network people, the computer lab people, or the students. They replaced the 11 year old VAX/VMS system that nobody had any problems with. The thing was rock solid and had years of uptime. The switch was, to say the least, disasterous and expensive.
All it takes is a slick sell to some admistrators that don't know whats going on.
I would not be surprised to see this 15,000 student technically oriented school go with Windows Live.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
If I were a student I'd be pretty pissed about this. I'd probably just cancel the POS Microsoft account and continue using one that I've been using for years.
My sig is too lon
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
l on.27s_Razor
Has a slightly different meaning in its original form. Oh, did I say slightly? I meant a great fucking huge deal of difference, sorry.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_J._Hanlon#Han
While we can debate the merits and demarits of this all we want to, no one seems to be talking about the costs. Any time I have had to deal with an "easy" Microsoft solution, my cost estimates immediately tripple. What I don't see here is who is paying for the hardware, phone lines and support. Let's face it, the costs of the software are trivial. How much gear is the school (University) going to have to fork out to host this beast? Oh, nothing? Because it will be hosted for free in Redmond? Fine - how much do I have to pay for communications costs? How big a pipe will I need? Let's see, 10,000 freshmen, with 100 MB connections...Can you do the math? Don't we have better things to do with the cash? Like hire qualified teachers?
" Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. "
G. Orwell
Lessee - a filtered search engine, control of all incoming and outgoing communications, a Media Center telescreen on the wall at the commons and in most of the rooms...
Winston Smith: Does Big Brother exist?
O'Brien: Of course he exists.
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
... to promote their products. Why not get the whole university to jump on board? It's not much different from their ultra cheap software deals (e.g., Office for $20 if you're a student at xyzU). Another attempt at lock-in. As long as the government continues to ignore their predatory practices, they will maintain their monopoly on the market.
Mac OS X or Linux might eventually push them down to only an 80% share, but as the antitrust case becomes a distant memory, they'll tighten the screws again and reestablish 90+.
Rule of thumb: Anything that allows you to "level up" is out to fuck you, take your money, or both. Examples: School, military, corporate hierarchy, catholic church, world of warcraft, scientology, etc.
In both Internet Explorer and Firefox? No ... didn't think so. Try both. It is not the same. Just because you didn't realise you are missing 90% of the functionality that doesn't mean you're not a moron!
like philip morris?
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
My University discouraged email forwarding by telling professors only to reply to messages from the student's .edu accounts. They Uni wanted to keep track of our system usage; we changed email apps 3 times in 4 years. They would be the type of Uni to use and love this system, force an IE Start page on the students. Of course at the start of each year we got a CD with corporate virus software, spy ware apps and Firefox so it might not work well.
Sorry bud, works great here. Firefox 1.5.0.2.
There is no preview pane.
Sure is! Pretty pictures and all. Looks like Bush is probing gas prices.
There is no interactivity whatsoever.
I can drag/drop windows around, pop config menus, hit the +,- buttons, sure works great for me!
Suggest upgrading your Firefox. Or turning Javascript back on. One of the two.
I jumped off of Hotmail about a year after MS ruined it (i.e. took it over.) Just because people get sucked in early doesn't mean they'll stay there forever. I think this will just get more people pissed off at their product and marketing strategy.
"Why doesn't this work with my Mac's browser?"
"Why can't I use Firefox to check my email?"
"This email program sucks!"
END OF LINE
Run Windows Live in a virtual Windows session on your favorite Linux distribution, and thus relegate it to its proper position.
I was thinking about using Windows Live (Hotmail?) for my domain email.
But forget it, no way I'm gonna use that if it won't work under Firefox.
Just think of how many people (Joe Average types, not geeks) started off with DOS/Windows 3.1 machines and built up a whole lot of data on their boxes between the original release and even up to a year or two after Windows 95 was released. Then when the time came to move to a new PC, remember how all of those users migrated their data from the Windows 3.1 box to Windows 95. They were very painstaking in their attention to detail with their precious data, lovingly learning about the file formats and required conversions and then running test migrations before committing to the moved data. And when some of them moved to Macintoshes when the iMacs came out, they were even very good about carrying their data and converting properly there too. Yes, I believe the Microsoft is right in thinking that they will have lifelong customers by 0wnz0ring their user's data and keeping them from using third rate products from competitors. The day and age of people wanting to try alternatives to the mainstream products, have come and gone. Everyone is perfectly happy with the products and services that MS gives them these days and really has no interest in alternatives like Firefox, Google, Mac OS X or Linux. So MS can say this with confidence since there will never be a day when their users might want to migrate their Windows Live data to another service.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Microsoft must really, really, really want this thing to succeed, as the comments after TFA are all "gooly-gee how cool! I want one!" fanboy (or rather, pseudo-fanboy) astroturfing.
And speaking of TFA, it says absolutely nothing about "Windows Live does not support any browsers besides IE 6, does not support POP or IMAP, and does not support email forwarding."
Seems to me you guys could have found a better FA about this. Is Beta News owned by Microsoft? From TFA it sure looks like it.
-AC (Mozilla rules!)
That's funny, when I log into Windows Live Mail with Firefox 1.5 I always get this message:
Live Mail will let you log in using other browsers, but when you do, it locks you into the "classic" interface -- basically the static old Hotmail UI. If you want the shiny new Live UI you have to be using IE.
Read my blog.
Correction -- it seems that there is an HTML fallback mode, so it is accessible without IE. Apparently the "IE only" thing was put in there by the /. poster and doesn't reflect reality.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
(title says it all.)
That's the funniest thing I've read all day :D
Cheers for the laugh!
The Mac, and by extension the Safari browser, still has a significant presence in educational institutions. Wouldn't it make sense for Microsoft to build in support for that platform?
The coolest voice ever.
The Microsoft platform monopoly is very weak right now. Any web application designed for a single version of M$ will fail for about half of your users. While they still have sizable majority of OS use, you can't count on a specific version being present. When you permutate that with browser used, your numbers fall even more.
Less than 60% of people use IE 6. That means about two in five people will not be able to use this stupid service.
Even M$ OS share is slipping. XP, the "dominant" platform only has 79% of the market. If you take out what people use at work, the Linux + Mac percentage is probably better than 10% now.
So, while IE 6 is "available" to a majority of users, 25% prefer something else. In short, they care.
If your school cares, they won't be using this service.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"catching the students early on will turn them into life-long users of Windows Live."
This is too late to simply turn them into Windows Live users by default. Most college student today have been using email for years, and have developed their own preferences. I know I would be frustrated by it.
"Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony!"
they give them software if the college agrees to use and or teach certain languages such as .NET or ASP and such. I wasnt given the exact information on what software they give them but I'm guessing it maybe licences for Windows or Office, as well as reduced or free .NET software.
Most MS employees come here and shill, pretending to be an average user. Thank you for your honesty.
Because Firefox is not consistent between releases, we can only guarantee to support the latest release (not all releases going forward).
You might put a bug in your boss' ear about this little thing called "standards." They're completely necessary. I'll use an analogy here, the household appliance.
The plugs that plug into your wall have to be standard; at least, standardized to your country. And they have to work with all appliances since the invention of electrical house wiring and wall plugs.
The voltage in the US must be 110 volts (there are actually two 110 volt circuts in a 220 volt appliance). It must also be 60hz.
Otherwise, nothing would work. If your company doesn't start learning this soon, you're going to be left behind. Standards are as important to the internet as they are with house wiring, and for the same reasons.
Note that Google Maps works in any browser. That's because they're writing to standards, not trying to lock you into their proprietary crap. As long as you ignore standards, you're not going to "fucking kill Google."
Kids still use Windoze? Not the ones with a clue, and that's a much greater percentage than the adult population.
This will force them onto a M$ OS. Most schools require a daily check of your school email address. The "service" does not forward your mail. They are going to have to hike to a public terminal or have a windoze computer in their dorm. Sooner or later, they will have a Windoze partition, just for this stupid email service.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Sadly not true. A counterexample is Cambridge University, where Roger Needham--the head of the CS department--decided to whore out the university's credibility to Bill Gates. The deal was kept very secret, and a lot of people were angry when it was announced, but by then it was too late. Needham got what he wanted, a directorship at Microsoft.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
windowslive
should be
windowslave
Ok, so I might get flamed for this, but who cares.
I'm currently on gentoo, with firefox, and browsing Windows Live Mail beta without any trouble!
I've had a hotmail account for about 4 years now, and honestly, I like the live beta interface a lot more. However, it's still FAR behind Gmail's. But it's cleaner and not as clunky to navigate (at least under firefox, dunno what kind of crap IE pulls out of it's butt on that one).
Also, FYI, the beta version of windows live mail DOES have a Forward button. I don't know where that kind of idiocy came about, but PLEASE don't try and make it worse than it is. It's already crap, no need to put it down more!
As for colleges who won't run their own mail servers I can only say that they're:
1) stupid. running a mail server is easy, if you've got servers running already, there are plenty of OSS mail servers that do just fine, with a webmail interface that support both POP and IMAP.
2) already sold on MS software. It's just a fact. If you're afraid of students using MS software for life, then use OpenOffice, or AbiWord, or Lotus Notes, or some other office suite! There's plenty out there. But no. Campuses will almost always be using MS Office and MS formats.
My campus uses MS Office for both it's Windows and Mac machines, and we're split about 50-50 for wintels/macs on campus, but we do have an IT department that's not afraid of running their own servers, and if students insist long enough and nicely enough for features, they'll eventually get implemented over the summer.
So honestly, that idea of going with windows live mail (BETA still!) is a bad idea. Why would you want MS servers running your mail? And not only that, but MS Servers controlled by MS? That stinks privacy violation to me! What happens if the DoJ wants to peek at a student's emails? They don't have to subpoena the school anymore, since the school isn't hosting that email server, they subpoena MS, who's more than likely to not give a crap and just let them have whatever they want!
I'm more worried about the privacy implications for the students' whose campuses have signed that deal. Not to mention that MS is going to have one hell of a pain of tech support calls because of crashes as their system is still beta.
Just a student's $0.02 of opinion on this one.
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
Who was it that said .. if you love someone, set them free? :)
The Dead Milkmen - but you misquoted them. The actual quote (don't remember what song, it's on the "Death Rides a Pale Cow" CD) is "if you love someone, set them on fire".
(MRC="recycle")
I would gladly use Windows Live for the rest of my life when Microsoft sends me $1,000,000,000 check in the mail. Seriously, I would.
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If it were true that the email client you used in college would become the ONLY one you would EVER use, I would still be using elm. Seriously, no email forwarding? What moron came up with that "feature"?
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Well, actually, if anyone was going to trademark xmlHttpRequest as a technology, it should be Microsoft, because they invented it,.
No they didn't. They created a Javascript function called xmlHttpRequest, but people were doing the same thing using hidden frames or windows well before Microsoft implemented the function. Microsoft was trying to do some fancy-shmancy stuff with their web interface for Outlook, using the same technique others had been using for about a year. Claiming they invented it is like claiming Exakta invented the camera just because they made the first SLR.
It was nice they implemented it, though. It made life a little easier. Not a lot, but a little.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
GAH! My school (The Ohio State University) is not participating in this Live! e-mail program as far as I know, but there have been chalk and flyer adverts all over the damn place for live.windows.com. I laughed my ass off the first time I saw it, but now it's just getting annoying.
This post is B.S. I use Live Mail every day with Firefox. I have no decreased functionality compared to IE6.
I suggest that as many students who can vote with their dollars.
In short, transfer. Any academic institution that forces its students to use such a limiting piece of software deserves to have zero students in year two of its deployment. If an academic institution is so lacking in knowledge and foresight that it deploys this solution, then it is probably not an academic institution that can offer a quality education.
For the record, I designed, installed, and managed an electronic mail environment supporting over 25,000 users with an integrated electronic address book, and interfaced to 6 proprietary mail systems for departments with legacy mail. I created this entire environment with publicly available software with the exception of the servers (a cluster of Sun machines). If I had to do it over again, I might replace the Sun servers with Linux blade servers.
Then again, I might not.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sorry but your statistics are complete bunk.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
It used to be that Universities were one of the few spots with e-mail access. E-mail was practically a perk. This is no longer the case. Universities need to spend money on staff e-mail accounts, but spending money on managing thousands of student accounts is really pointless. E-mail is freely available to anyone with a Net connection. It seems to make more sense to let MS run the e-mail server (and the spam filter and the mess of other pieces) for the students. Now we can pay a little bit of money and provide the ad-free e-mail as a service. Most University usage policies are so limited that my University account is just another account to manage. As long as students are not required to use the MS e-mail, then the system is pretty fair. As for the CS department... they'll always have their own gear anyways. So the picky CS students can bug their own department for special privileges. Of course, this could be totally side-stepped by implementing a system like WebCT and requiring that all Staff *actually use* the system. If this is the case, then you don't need e-mail to talk to the prof or your classmates, just leave an online message for them: Problem Solved!
C'mon, guys. Think about it. You have email. If WL talks SMTP, email can reach your service, and yours can reach WL. Your email client works with your own email service. It's WL's POP/IMAP/browser support that's irrelevant to outsiders. Only SMTP matters.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
You can link to the actuall subsection in Wikipedia on Microsoft corollary to Hanlon's Razor.
In fact, I regularly use Outlook Web Access as an example that Microsoft, who have every reason in the world to love fully IE-compatible web apps, can make one that works just fine with Firefox. If MS can do it, and get it right, why can't every bank and every local government make their web sites work with something other than IE (and in the case of the worst offenders, a specific version of IE)?
Looks like MS is taking leaf out of the fast food and credit card companies' books:
0 .html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/Story/0,,1759888,0
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
function activex_based() {
if(!window.ActiveXObject) return;
try { return new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP"); } catch(e) {}
try { return new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP"); } catch(e) {}
}
function nativexmlhttprequest_based() {
if(!window.XMLHttpRequest) return;
try { return new XMLHttpRequest(); } catch(e) {}
}
function request() {
return activex_based() || nativexmlhttprequest_based();
}
var ajax = request() ;
if(ajax) {
foo();
} else {
bar();
}
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Not at all--the CS department will maintain their own mail servers.
It's not that Google isn't evil; it's that, if it is evil, it's subtle about it, not blatant. That just conveys a lack of respect.
In a WinXP class that i just got done with today the prof wanted to demonstrate windows live to us.We went to some kind of map part of it to look at satellite images.This service was a joke.It was slow.It was cumbersome.It totally turned me off of it immediately.I'm sure that many others will have the same experience
Crisis is the rule, not the exception.