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."
It already will be. I'm attending Uni in Mississippi, and we are required to check our email daily. I imagine this policy is common elsewhere.
I hate grammar Nazi's.
...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?