Windows Live brings students savings and convenience
Technological upgrades in enterprise are often a costly venture for any organization. But the new e-mail system being employed at University of Missouri-St. Louis and other system campuses has a very small price tag:
It is free.
In a move to meet student and faculty requests and needs while saving money and server space, the new Windows Live e-mail system being rolled out on campus this semester provides users with a more modern and powerful e-mail experience while also providing new tools, like live chat and online storage for files.
Students will also be able to keep their old e-mail account after they graduate.
“You get to a situation in computing where technologies change, and we’ve had several complaints over the years … And you have to look around, you have to look at the budget, you have to look at how the markets have changed,” Mary Fowler, director of user services in UM-St. Louis’ Information Technology Services, said.
But, according to Fowler, perhaps the biggest selling point for the new system is that it preserves the global address book feature of the old system. This address book allowed users to search for any person in the UM system and to obtain their contact information. “The whole mail strategy is based on these addresses, so you can get to anybody at the University of Missouri,” Fowler said. Some minor bugs have been found in the system, the biggest being that users moving from the old e-mail system to the new one have been unable to move their files over to the new account. However, ITS is planning to make the move final by March 29. “It’s pretty well received. With a lot of people, it has been pretty positive feedback,” Fowler said. The free hosting from Microsoft replaces the old exchange software, which the university was paying roughly $30,000 a year to license from the same company, Fowler said. Microsoft will make its income through the ads that will appear in the user’s e-mail once they are no longer a student. The service also moves the storage of student and faculty data off campus and into what information technology professionals have come to call “the cloud.” This is shorthand for cloud computing, a system in which data is stored in vast remote servers, sent there by users via the Internet. However, the reliability of cloud computing, in particular that of Microsoft’s, was drawn into question following an incident last year in which T-Mobile cellular users lost their contact information due to a glitch in Microsoft’s cloud server.
Overall, Fowler finds the reliability to be a non-issue, as there is a written agreement with Microsoft guaranteeing zero data loss. “We have never had a data loss,” Fowler said of the new service. “I am confident … that we are OK there, that I feel personally that the risk is maybe less than living by the airport.”
Kelowna, Feb. 19,10
Dear Editor, would you be interested in publishing this letter?
Open letter to Bill Gates.
Dear Bill Gates, recently the prominent scientist Stephen Hawking warned humanity that “we’re acting with reckless indifference to our future on Planet Earth.”
Your dream in cutting CO2 to zero by 2040 is praiseworthy, but much more than that needs to be done to save our planet, and it’s just not happening. Since several attempts to contact you previously have failed, I’m trying with this open letter to reach you, as it is urgent, since Stephen Hawking also said earlier “the Doomsday Clock advanced to five minutes to midnight.”
I’ve been orbiting (involuntary J) the sun since 1935 and researched the causes of our problems, and if there are possible solutions, for as long as you’ve been alive.
I invite you to look through ‘my telescope’, as I am, until proven otherwise, a modern day Galileo, ignored and maybe silently ridiculed. You’ll find some of my thoughts on the Internet, but these are only appetizers.
Should you decline to meet me privately, I then ask you to a public debate where, should you be the looser, you will spend three hundred thousand dollars, to a project that is needed to allow other people to look through my telescope. I do not want your money. Personally, I know nothing; I’m just stepping on the shoulders of giants and consolidate their genius.
However, to be fair, should I loose this debate, my loss will be one dollar, as this is about the relative worth between us.
You know Bill, we have much to learn. I heartily embrace the humble and honest admission by the late physicist John Wheeler “we do not know the first thing about the universe, about ourselves, and about our place in the universe.”
Sincerely
Gunther Ostermann
Kelowna, BC. 250 765 8726 gco@shaw.ca