After five years of toiling under the same system, MSU will update its e-mail system this fall, adding significantly more storage space and usability features that the old system lacked.
Last updated in March 2003, Academic Technology Services plans to launch the new mail system sometime this fall, though the specific date is still up in the air.
The old system, which holds 176,000 e-mail accounts, is near the maximum capacity, filling up six of the seven terabytes of space. The new system will roughly double the amount of space MSU has to offer, allowing for the extra storage.
“We realize that e-mail is a core service that people expect and need on a daily basis, 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” said Katherine Ball, communications manager for MSU ATS. “We want to make sure that when we actually do roll out a new system we really put all of the pieces in place that need to be to support that system.”
The highlight of the new system for students is an increase in storage space from 128 megabytes on the old system, to 512 MB on the new system. Faculty, staff and graduate students will get a boost to 1 gigabyte of storage.
To keep the costs down of updating the system, ATS is trying to reuse as much equipment as possible, Ball said.
“We know that is something people have been calling for,” she said.
Advertising junior Alex Kyle said he now forwards all of his mail to Gmail.com, a mail system run by search engine Google.
“(Mail.msu.edu) is slow and the amount of space isn’t enough,” Kyle said. “Comparing with features like Gmail, it’s just lackluster.”
Economics senior Phillip Marin said though he has heard of storage problems, he’s never experienced them.
“I know I’ve had like 1000 messages on there and it’s only been like 10 percent of the quota,” Marin said.
The new system should bear the same Mail.msu.edu moniker, and students will keep their current address, along with most of the content from their inboxes.
However, that is about all that is remaining the same.
The new user interface will allow users to switch between three different modes — dynamic, traditional and minimalist – while also giving them a choice of themes, background and text colors.
In addition to a new look, which has yet to be finalized, the new Mail.msu.edu will feature a calendar, global address book, and searching and sorting tools, Ball said.
They also aimed to help MSU’s large group of international students by including a feature that allows a student to choose the language in which they read their mail.
“Even English is in Canadian, British and standard so that’s going to help our international students as well,” Ball said.
The two systems will run simultaneously after the launch, allowing all users time to get used to the new system before switching permanently, Ball said.
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