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.
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?
>> 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?
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
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...
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
Wrong! Most students will not have an opinion until they experience it. Many will still not have an opinion after that.
"Most dont know or want to know what pop/smtp/imap are"
True, but they will find out the hard way that their e-mail service is lacking something that they can't name. At the latest, they will do so when they try to read their e-mail in some webcafé or similar place that only has a non-IE browser. They will also notice that a lot of their friends have a choice of mail clients, whereas they do not.
When I built an e-mail system for a business school, I was positively surprised by the amount of people who were actually knowledgable far beyond my expectations and they were really opinionated. Freedom of choice matters even among non-CS students. The CS students will of course be outraged and disgusted.
I think a remarkable amount of students will rely on gmail for their e-email.
Lemon curry???
Yeah, most of Windows Live does. Try using Windows Live Mail with Firefox...it isn't pretty to say the least. All of the features that make Windows Live Mail better than Hotmail are gone, and some of the features that make Hotmail usable are gone as well. You can't even mark a message as unread in Live Mail while using Firefox. No drag and drop, no preview pane. I have a Hotmail account that was using Windows Live Mail, but it is useless on my Mac, so I have now switched back to the Hotmail interface. My main email is gmail though, thank god.
I invited my non-tech friend to Gmail, and she used it as a second email account for a while. After trying out Windows Live Mail, she switched to Gmail on her main account, not liking the direction Hotmail was going.
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.
.....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!"
hrmm... loooks like something else somebody said about M$ purposely delaying a firefox "workaround" for this windows live thing - they'll initially come without pop/smtp, and then a year into it, they'll "suddenly make a breakthrough" with it and you can subscribe to the "groundbreakingly new advanced features" of pop/smtp...
You can't use += like that... "colleges" would already need a value.
Microsoft: error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before '+='
GCC: error: syntax error before += token
Registered Linux user #421033
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.
"Most dont know or want to know what pop/smtp/imap are"
And here I thought the purpose of school was to teach people not whore out their students to corporations.
Lets call spade a spade here. Schools just sold their students to MS. There is no other way to look at it.
evil is as evil does
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!
" 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!
Since Windows Live is an online service, why not discontinue e-mail service in universities for students completely? After all, its a lot of work, money (hardware, support, licenses) and infrastructure for a very transient population.
;-)
The school for itself should downgrade its e-mail servers to a simpler setup for just staff and researchers. This is probably more for legal reasons (eg. need to keep backup copies of important communications) than for security (eg. press forward to "@gmail.com" and its gone)
Just let students fill in their own e-mail account, or ask them to create one at hotmail, yahoo, google or their own preference on enrollment; just force them to click on an "this account really works" e-mail on enrollment. Make it a requirement that students have a working e-mail account. And of course they can make a new one just for the "university" part of their life.
You mentioned:
* Student can keep using the account after graduation (+1)
* Students have no need to learn "Another Stupid Broken E-mail client" TM because the university requires this
* University has less need for its own infrastructure (+2)
* No need to login / authenticate against university servers when outside the campus (security +1)
Issues:
* Less Privacy ? But then , the university itself is now less likely to "peak" at your e-mails (+2)
* Make sure you get your free e-mail in Russia if you are paranoid about US government snooping
And I am sure that the university can get a good deal for a Google Mail hosted students.standford.edu account or something
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.
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
It's not only the personal inconvenience that's involved. Wouldn't you question the administration's ability to make sound decisions in other areas, based on their bad decisions in areas that are visible. Would you want to attend a college run by a bunch of yahoos?
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
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.
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.