Windows Live Goes to College 330
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."
Ok (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:how long... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Microsoft promises no ulterior plans. (Score:2, Interesting)
Hopefully this will die quietly, like BOB did.
I've tried Windows live email .. EEEK! (Score:3, Interesting)
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...
The thing is... (Score:5, Interesting)
So, uh, all hype, and it's sorta nerdy - but does it matter?
webmail (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
What schools? (Score:3, Interesting)
Most students arent doing computer science (Score:1, Interesting)
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
Students might not accept it (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
outsided again (Score:3, Interesting)
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).
Re:Most students arent doing computer science (Score:2, Interesting)
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...
Re:int colleges+=72; (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft: error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before '+='
GCC: error: syntax error before += token
They Might Be Right (Score:3, Interesting)
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.