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Is there any change you could coordinate with us to encourage IATS to poke Microsoft about POP access? Our efforts have our University talking to MS about it, so I'm hoping more than one University doing it might help. You can get our contact info and all the information we've collected on our particular roll out (including all the complaints and problems we have been hearing about from our students) at our website: iwantmypop.com.
Is there any chance you could coordinate with us to try and get your technical services to start asking Microsoft about POP? Our site is at: iwantmypop.com.
Is there any chance you have some like minded friends still at the university could get in contact with us? We've raised enough of a fuss that our University is talking to Microsoft again because we are complaining so hard. We'd love to get other Universities to do the same thing, if we could: iwantmypop.com contains all the information we've been working on so far and has ways to contact us.
Is there any chance you can coordinate with us to try and get your student body to complain to the tech people and try and pressure Microsoft into adopting POP? Our University is in conversations with them right now, but I can't help but think more nudging could only help us and maybe everyone.
I have a free throwaway hotmail account for giving things I register I don't want to give my real email address. It's not okay--I know it works in browsers on all three systems, but it does not work with my desktop mail client that I've used with the University for three years.
In fact, you're most certainly right in that it's JUST like a Hotmail account. Literally. Which creates another problem. In that all students who do have Windows Live Hotmail accounts they're already logged into have to log out of their Hotmail accounts and log into their Windows Live Mail accounts for the University and can't use the default remember me functions on the website. Students are reporting that it's quite a pain, and it also causes some measure of confusion when they're told to log in at this site to their mail and they end up in their Hotmail mailboxes!
On the flip side, how fucking hard is it to take 5 minutes out of your day and go to one of the labs at your school to check your mail?
Once a day works for some people. But I get emails from advisors and colleagues all throughout my work day. My department gave me a laptop to work on for a reason.
I have my mail client set up to get my emails and I have certain filters that help me realize when my advisor emails me (because I want to respond to her as quickly as possible about my work). This way, I can work through the day, and my email comes to me. I know when something is important, and I have to respond to it quickly, and I can check the other stuff at my leisure. It's a great system.
If I had to use a browser, I'd have to remember to manually go check my email instead. It would be...very tiring. When I say, "I don't have time", it's not that I never have any free time, I think you're right--forcing this way of working on me really disrupts my process, and I don't like it, because I feel like I don't have the time to do this manually while I am trying to work. It takes more time for me to manually go and check the webmail, than to sit and know my mail client will notify me when stuff comes up. I can then work steadily and still respond in a timely fashion.
There's no point in using a Windows boxen that isn't mine to check the email--the point is to keep my mail with me. I don't want to download my emails onto someone ELSE'S computer.
Also keep in mind that the laptop I've been given by my department and the computer in my lab are both Macs, because my department likes them.
I saw a comment in the news article about it that's worse than my situation, too:
So far, Windows Live Mail has been a usability nightmare. I already found VandalMail's web interface to be a horrible experience, but at least I was able to take advantage of POP support and use a mail client. Now I am stuck with an interface that is even worse and no POP support. And since this is a Microsoft product, it is unlikely that it will ever have support for a service akin to Google Notifier for my Mac. Since I'm using Firefox on my Mac, Windows Live Mail won't even preserve my password, so I have to enter it each time I have to open a tab to check my mail. I'm guessing this feature only works with Internet Explorer and am highly dissatisfied with the decision to provide students with a mandatory e-mail service that is in any way OS-dependent.
I've written about my personal issues via Microsoft's user interface feedback form, and I've encouraged the other students to do the same for their issues. In the meantime, I'm stuck with a highly inflexible mail service. I think outsourcing is fine, but it would be much better to use Gmail or Yahoo! Mail. Both support POP and IMAP, and Google's Notifier service is invaluable to someone such as myself, who is the TA for over a hundred students who have many questions around test time. Windows Live also doesn't let me forward to another account.
This person has one hundred students who are going to email him questions that he needs to answer. It's his job to answer these students timely, and his job is to cater to students learning in their classes, and the university has crippled that ability. More's the pity--he might have been able to swing a staff account if he knew ahead of time how bad this was going to be.
I'll note here that my University has asked Microsoft for POP, but Microsoft wasn't providing it at the time. So I don't think they don't want to support POP. They try to reassure us by saying that Microsoft might implement POP because their service is evolving and we should just hope it will happen. So it's not a policy of not supporting POP, it's just that POP wasn't a requirement. Why not, I don't know.
No caring for Exchange servers, which is a royal pain.
Haha, actually, they're migrating the faculty/staff to MS Exchange servers, now that you mention it.
I kinda hope they don't jack up tuition too much tho. WLM isn't worth it.
WLM is cheaper than the past system, so that probably won't happen. It's one of its benefits that need to be considered beside the negatives. Although I'd note that $3 a head a month is more than double what we were paying for the old system.
Question: what sort of things do you think would need to be implemented in an email protocol that would require a rich web client instead of a desktop client? It may just be the late hour, but I think the interface a user sees their email with can be separated from the protocol used to send it to the mail server in almost all instances. Desktop mail clients are very useful for lots of things, like downloading your email and reading it while you are offline.
If Microsoft's protocol is indeed a useful progression of methods, then maybe they could publish their protocol so that there would be more clients that supported it in an official manner. And I think clients would love to support it! The existence of the Hotmail Webmail extension hack for Thunderbird proves that. But so far, Microsoft doesn't seem interested in creating a new industry standard protocol at all. Rather, it locks the users into one client available on one operating system if they want to download their emails.
I think the relationship between a student and a University is slightly different than a relationship between a employee and their company. Also, almost everyone already has their own personal emails as well as university ones, but need to use the university ones to receive certain notifications. (Like, class has been cancelled, this assignment has changed, you need to register for classes, your such-and-such check has come in, etc.) Public universities are also required to provide things like Section 508 accessibility (I don't think WLM is 508 accessible).
These kind of decisions are supposed to be made with input from specific committees. So far, our emails haven't indicated these committees being involved in this decision.
I don't think this in any way forces students to use separate email systems for their personal stuff. I think it inconveniences many users using these email systems for their University stuff.
How much space per email box? How much experience does the company have with exceedingly large clients? Unfortunately, the University seems to have a great yearning for some kind of shared calendar-type ability, so I doubt they'd be interested in something so mundane as email that just functions like it should.
I'd like to note that I've been pointing out this isn't forcing Windows on us, per se, but non-Windows systems do have substandard support, because there are NO supported desktop email clients. This problem could be solved with the addition of POP or IMAP access. I don't think the web client for Windows Live Mail is Section 508 complaint, either, and it needs to be. This, too, could be solved with the addition of POP or IMAP access.
What is the freaking difference between this and Hotmail or Gmail?
It's more about the freaking difference between this and our old system, which had POP and IMAP access. Also, GMail has POP access freely available. Actually, there really ISN'T a difference between this and Hotmail, literally, which has caused annoyance and confusion--when students go to the place they're supposed to log in to their WLM account, they'll be greeted with their Hotmail inboxes if they're logged in. In order to access their WLM account, they have to log out of their Hotmail, log back in, and lose the browser's ability to remember their log in so they don't have to type username@vandals.uidaho.edu every single time. The people who prefer web clients don't like that. The people who prefer their desktop mail client are ticked, because it doesn't work with them--not even on MS products like Outlook and Eudora. And what's worse, is they switched without realizing it because the new system is being promoted so heavily without any notice of the consequences. One day their mail client works, with its automatic checking for new mail and filters and ease and convenience. The next day, it's gone, and they can't switch back.
The only mail client we've gotten to work besides Windows Live Mail Desktop is Thunderbird, which has an extension. This is NOT ideal: it's basically a hack that could break at any moment. As far as I understand, our ITS won't even support WLMD. I think it's because of the ads and beta status.
I should note that the email is pretty much available through webmail on all systems in some form, to my knowledge, even if the person needs to use their "Classic" version that cuts down on the features to work better with some browsers. People on non-Windows platforms aren't totally locked out, but they are in suboptimal positions, if that makes any sense.
I know that the IT department realizes that Apple computers exist. The Bookstore is an authorized Apple dealer, their VMobile program
As far as I know, all operating systems can check their mail, but only using the web mail client. Desktop clients besides Windows Live Mail Desktop aren't supported, because Windows Live doesn't support POP, although there seem to be some Thunderbird extensions that get around this. However, I suspect they could be liable to break at any time if Microsoft changes the system; people can't rely on them to work. And, some people don't use Thunderbird for their client.
Does this place have an active placement of Macs or PCs
Both: both PCs and Macs are sold in the campus bookstore, which is an authorized Apple dealer. Their VMobile program leases both PC and Mac computers. Some departments, like the Biology department, are very Mac-oriented.
Unfortunately, like I mention in the article's text, that would be a feasible solution if we were allowed to forward our email or register our own emails for our University email. However, official University email must go to our University emails, and it cannot be forwarded to an account of our choice. It is built in with a lot of the classroom systems so that the teacher automatically sends emails to the students' University emails for important information about classes. I have lots of emails, more than I need--but all of them, except for the throwaway Hotmail I keep to shove at businesses who want an email for no good reason, are hooked up to my mail client.
I'm going to confirm what other people have said--I mentioned Windows Live Mail Desktop in the article. But it's only for Windows, and our student body does have a decent percentage of Mac users: our Bookstore is an authorized Apple dealer.
For me, personally, it might not end up being a real problem: I haven't switched over to the system for now, so I'm safe until May 15th. I might graduate before everyone is forced, and it's possible my department might give me a staff email if I ask and bat my eyelashes real hard--although none of those are certainties. (Staff and faculty are not being moved to Windows Live; they are being moved to an MS Exchange server.) But I have friends who have switched before they realized it would lock out their mail clients, and it's a problem for them. And now that I've been talking to people, I've found other people who have been similarly stranded. Once they switch their account over, they're not allowed to move back.
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CookieSafe: will let you allow cookies for given sites, allow cookies for sessions for given sites, allow them temporarily for given sites, or not let a site set the cookie.
Is there any change you could coordinate with us to encourage IATS to poke Microsoft about POP access? Our efforts have our University talking to MS about it, so I'm hoping more than one University doing it might help. You can get our contact info and all the information we've collected on our particular roll out (including all the complaints and problems we have been hearing about from our students) at our website: iwantmypop.com.
Is there any chance you could coordinate with us to try and get your technical services to start asking Microsoft about POP? Our site is at: iwantmypop.com.
Is there any chance you have some like minded friends still at the university could get in contact with us? We've raised enough of a fuss that our University is talking to Microsoft again because we are complaining so hard. We'd love to get other Universities to do the same thing, if we could: iwantmypop.com contains all the information we've been working on so far and has ways to contact us.
Is there any chance you can coordinate with us to try and get your student body to complain to the tech people and try and pressure Microsoft into adopting POP? Our University is in conversations with them right now, but I can't help but think more nudging could only help us and maybe everyone.
I have a free throwaway hotmail account for giving things I register I don't want to give my real email address. It's not okay--I know it works in browsers on all three systems, but it does not work with my desktop mail client that I've used with the University for three years.
In fact, you're most certainly right in that it's JUST like a Hotmail account. Literally. Which creates another problem. In that all students who do have Windows Live Hotmail accounts they're already logged into have to log out of their Hotmail accounts and log into their Windows Live Mail accounts for the University and can't use the default remember me functions on the website. Students are reporting that it's quite a pain, and it also causes some measure of confusion when they're told to log in at this site to their mail and they end up in their Hotmail mailboxes!
It wasn't the hardware they were talking about as much as the SunOne software they were using, if that helps.
You can read about our last setup, which didn't work out so well.
On the flip side, how fucking hard is it to take 5 minutes out of your day and go to one of the labs at your school to check your mail? Once a day works for some people. But I get emails from advisors and colleagues all throughout my work day. My department gave me a laptop to work on for a reason.
I have my mail client set up to get my emails and I have certain filters that help me realize when my advisor emails me (because I want to respond to her as quickly as possible about my work). This way, I can work through the day, and my email comes to me. I know when something is important, and I have to respond to it quickly, and I can check the other stuff at my leisure. It's a great system.
If I had to use a browser, I'd have to remember to manually go check my email instead. It would be...very tiring. When I say, "I don't have time", it's not that I never have any free time, I think you're right--forcing this way of working on me really disrupts my process, and I don't like it, because I feel like I don't have the time to do this manually while I am trying to work. It takes more time for me to manually go and check the webmail, than to sit and know my mail client will notify me when stuff comes up. I can then work steadily and still respond in a timely fashion.
There's no point in using a Windows boxen that isn't mine to check the email--the point is to keep my mail with me. I don't want to download my emails onto someone ELSE'S computer.
Also keep in mind that the laptop I've been given by my department and the computer in my lab are both Macs, because my department likes them.
I saw a comment in the news article about it that's worse than my situation, too:
This person has one hundred students who are going to email him questions that he needs to answer. It's his job to answer these students timely, and his job is to cater to students learning in their classes, and the university has crippled that ability. More's the pity--he might have been able to swing a staff account if he knew ahead of time how bad this was going to be.
I'll note here that my University has asked Microsoft for POP, but Microsoft wasn't providing it at the time. So I don't think they don't want to support POP. They try to reassure us by saying that Microsoft might implement POP because their service is evolving and we should just hope it will happen. So it's not a policy of not supporting POP, it's just that POP wasn't a requirement. Why not, I don't know.
No caring for Exchange servers, which is a royal pain.
Haha, actually, they're migrating the faculty/staff to MS Exchange servers, now that you mention it.
I kinda hope they don't jack up tuition too much tho. WLM isn't worth it.
WLM is cheaper than the past system, so that probably won't happen. It's one of its benefits that need to be considered beside the negatives. Although I'd note that $3 a head a month is more than double what we were paying for the old system.
On a cursory glance, this might be just the solution I've been searching for! (Even though I really hope it's temporary.) Thank you very much!
Question: what sort of things do you think would need to be implemented in an email protocol that would require a rich web client instead of a desktop client? It may just be the late hour, but I think the interface a user sees their email with can be separated from the protocol used to send it to the mail server in almost all instances. Desktop mail clients are very useful for lots of things, like downloading your email and reading it while you are offline.
If Microsoft's protocol is indeed a useful progression of methods, then maybe they could publish their protocol so that there would be more clients that supported it in an official manner. And I think clients would love to support it! The existence of the Hotmail Webmail extension hack for Thunderbird proves that. But so far, Microsoft doesn't seem interested in creating a new industry standard protocol at all. Rather, it locks the users into one client available on one operating system if they want to download their emails.
I think the relationship between a student and a University is slightly different than a relationship between a employee and their company. Also, almost everyone already has their own personal emails as well as university ones, but need to use the university ones to receive certain notifications. (Like, class has been cancelled, this assignment has changed, you need to register for classes, your such-and-such check has come in, etc.) Public universities are also required to provide things like Section 508 accessibility (I don't think WLM is 508 accessible).
These kind of decisions are supposed to be made with input from specific committees. So far, our emails haven't indicated these committees being involved in this decision.
I don't think this in any way forces students to use separate email systems for their personal stuff. I think it inconveniences many users using these email systems for their University stuff.
Thanks for the thought on SPAM protection, that's a good point.
I want to thank you help desk guys so much for toughing this thing out. You're all aces.
How much space per email box? How much experience does the company have with exceedingly large clients? Unfortunately, the University seems to have a great yearning for some kind of shared calendar-type ability, so I doubt they'd be interested in something so mundane as email that just functions like it should.
I'd like to note that I've been pointing out this isn't forcing Windows on us, per se, but non-Windows systems do have substandard support, because there are NO supported desktop email clients. This problem could be solved with the addition of POP or IMAP access. I don't think the web client for Windows Live Mail is Section 508 complaint, either, and it needs to be. This, too, could be solved with the addition of POP or IMAP access.
What is the freaking difference between this and Hotmail or Gmail?
It's more about the freaking difference between this and our old system, which had POP and IMAP access. Also, GMail has POP access freely available. Actually, there really ISN'T a difference between this and Hotmail, literally, which has caused annoyance and confusion--when students go to the place they're supposed to log in to their WLM account, they'll be greeted with their Hotmail inboxes if they're logged in. In order to access their WLM account, they have to log out of their Hotmail, log back in, and lose the browser's ability to remember their log in so they don't have to type username@vandals.uidaho.edu every single time. The people who prefer web clients don't like that. The people who prefer their desktop mail client are ticked, because it doesn't work with them--not even on MS products like Outlook and Eudora. And what's worse, is they switched without realizing it because the new system is being promoted so heavily without any notice of the consequences. One day their mail client works, with its automatic checking for new mail and filters and ease and convenience. The next day, it's gone, and they can't switch back.
The only mail client we've gotten to work besides Windows Live Mail Desktop is Thunderbird, which has an extension. This is NOT ideal: it's basically a hack that could break at any moment. As far as I understand, our ITS won't even support WLMD. I think it's because of the ads and beta status.
Our mascot is "Joe Vandal", so named after the Vandals, an east Germanic tribe in the 5th century.
Do you know under what conditions the ads would/would not be there? Does it cost extra, and if so, how much?
I should note that the email is pretty much available through webmail on all systems in some form, to my knowledge, even if the person needs to use their "Classic" version that cuts down on the features to work better with some browsers. People on non-Windows platforms aren't totally locked out, but they are in suboptimal positions, if that makes any sense.
I know that the IT department realizes that Apple computers exist. The Bookstore is an authorized Apple dealer, their VMobile program
As far as I know, all operating systems can check their mail, but only using the web mail client. Desktop clients besides Windows Live Mail Desktop aren't supported, because Windows Live doesn't support POP, although there seem to be some Thunderbird extensions that get around this. However, I suspect they could be liable to break at any time if Microsoft changes the system; people can't rely on them to work. And, some people don't use Thunderbird for their client.
Does this place have an active placement of Macs or PCs
Both: both PCs and Macs are sold in the campus bookstore, which is an authorized Apple dealer. Their VMobile program leases both PC and Mac computers. Some departments, like the Biology department, are very Mac-oriented.
Unfortunately, like I mention in the article's text, that would be a feasible solution if we were allowed to forward our email or register our own emails for our University email. However, official University email must go to our University emails, and it cannot be forwarded to an account of our choice. It is built in with a lot of the classroom systems so that the teacher automatically sends emails to the students' University emails for important information about classes. I have lots of emails, more than I need--but all of them, except for the throwaway Hotmail I keep to shove at businesses who want an email for no good reason, are hooked up to my mail client.
I'm going to confirm what other people have said--I mentioned Windows Live Mail Desktop in the article. But it's only for Windows, and our student body does have a decent percentage of Mac users: our Bookstore is an authorized Apple dealer.
For me, personally, it might not end up being a real problem: I haven't switched over to the system for now, so I'm safe until May 15th. I might graduate before everyone is forced, and it's possible my department might give me a staff email if I ask and bat my eyelashes real hard--although none of those are certainties. (Staff and faculty are not being moved to Windows Live; they are being moved to an MS Exchange server.) But I have friends who have switched before they realized it would lock out their mail clients, and it's a problem for them. And now that I've been talking to people, I've found other people who have been similarly stranded. Once they switch their account over, they're not allowed to move back.