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- electrichead, on 10/12/2007, -3/+75They are just continuing their quest to box in college / university students into their technology. When I was there, they were offering us Windows XP for $10 and Visual Studio for about the same. Why? My college was getting a discount on all their MS Office needs.
I can see why it would be this way, I mean in some of our food courts, it was Coke-only and in others it was Pepsi-only. In the end, the only people hurt are the students. We're forced to learn .Net as an 'emerging technology' instead of PHP, which never gets mentioned. We learn Oracle and SQL Server but not MySql. When I finally got out into the workforce, I found that the entry level positions were for mostly classic ASP, PHP, etc. using MySql because of the way the pricing works. No one is going to trust a fresh graduate with a delicate new C# project.
Offering students a Windows Live account for free is just an extension of this phenomenon. When they graduate, they won't have the same privileges, their email accounts will go back to being ad supported and they will have to pay money to get back all the features they used to take for granted. - jahutch, on 10/12/2007, -5/+23(1) The cheap Windows XP, Office, etc, are the result not of MS give-aways, but of an Educational SITE LICENSE from Microsoft. Basically, the University pays a flat fee (and it is NOT cheap), and receives a site license - that is, a license that effectively allows you unlimited copies to cover all your students, faculty, and staff. Big corporations can and do get a similar deal.
(2) The reason OS X is not as cheap is because the universities generally CHOOSE NOT to buy an OS X site license? Why? Because site licenses are expensive, and when 95% of your users use Windows, it makes no sense to site license OS X. You need a LOT of people using a product before it becomes cost beneficial to site license it. So when you go buy OS X from your university, you get whatever their normal academic price + volume discount is.
Ever notice smaller colleges don't have the cheap Windows and Office? Its because they don't have enough users to justify the price of a site license. MS isn't giving anything away for free when it comes to software. Discount, sure, but every company does that in the educational sphere.
(3) I'm not even a CS major (I minored) and I know that what you learn is a CS curriculum is NOT a programming language. You learn *how* to think like a programmer and *how* to program. You learn things like data structures and object oriented programming. Once you know these, you can LEARN ANY LANGUAGE - its simply a matter of learning new syntax.
(4) The university I went to (Virginia Tech) switched from C++ to java as I was leaving, but they used BSD or Linux for most of their upper level classes. Lower level intro stuff was on MS Visual Studio, mainly because for the English student taking a CS elective, frankly installing linux would be harder than the class itself. I personally preferred the Visual Studio environment, so I programmed in it even in my upper level classes, then booted into linux to test it with gcc, etc and make sure it ran. It basically always did.
(5) For people who don't care about anything but getting a job, switching to the MS products is likely a boon. One of my friends who is a CS major is doing ASP.NET. The other is doing C#. Most of the rest are working in a Windows environment. The only one who isn't started his own company with some friends. That said, I'd prefer colleges stick to "industry standard" stuff, but the fact of the matter is, what you learn in a CS curriculum should be independent of what language or programming environment they choose to use. - Duston, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16I don't know any professors who would tolerate that.
- Tyrax, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13Colleges save money by not needing to administer their own student e-mail systems, and Microsoft gains mind share ...
Well, I guess this would draw eire if you replaced the words Microsoft with Google. - Zac3010, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Has anyone found a list of the participating colleges?
- dramatools, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11I can see it now... Clippy pops up and says...
"It looks like you're sending an e-mail to your parents asking for money. What would you like to say instead of 'I drank my lab fees at a weekend-long kegger?'" - LycoLoco, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Yikes. I haven't seen the Live email acccounts, but if they're anything like Hotmail and don't allow POP3 access, I feel sorry for those students. But then again, I don't even use my school email address for anything anyway.
- FullMetalMonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Google already hosting email servers for whoever wants it, they just aren't martketing it that well.
- silicondon, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11no spam?
*cough*shareholder*cough* - nebunezzar, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12GMail doesn't get ads in the inbox. They're just like the google ads you see on the side of many web pages. It's free, gives more space, and works with more software than the hotmail/outlook thing MS is forcing.
- Nitro2985, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11What? Advertise their product to potential customers? Every major company does stuff like this. A steak house might provide the food at a charity event; some company might give out free tee shirts at a sports event.
How is this any different? - thejerm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9My university is in talks with Google to host our 20,000 student email accounts
- Drahknon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9We had the same thing at my university... which was actually a pretty good deal. It irked me a bit, though, that I could get any Windows product for $5/disk but that they charged $69 for OSX Tiger. Ah well.
As for the article... it's not a big deal. Compared to the mail offerings for some universities, I'm sure it's an improvement. We used Pine until the last year of my grad school. - ubergmr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I enjoy my windows live account, it one of the few accounts i can use for different things. So far i have used it for xbox live stats, dowloading visual studio express edition, and trying out things like the live homepage.
- Otto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Google is doing the "GMail for your domain" thing, and it works reasonably well. They're still adding to it all the time. They just recently said that they are trying to integrate it with the calendar program like GMail is already, and they've already got it working particularly well with Jabber for IM. Even works with Jabber federation, if you have a DNS host that can let you add the necessary SRV records.
- energyblue, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Imagine a time when parents stop you from picking a college because they use Windows Live or other services.
- havaloc, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9Google should get in the business. Everyone uses Gmail here already.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -10/+14Another good reason not to go to collage.
- sinner0423, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I didn't mind the cheap (less than $20) Windows XP / Office XP discs that were passed out at my former campus, however, I wouldn't trust Microsoft with my email.
Any tech savy college kid knows Gmail is where it's at. I don't get "offers" or spam from Google, ever. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I left a prominant college about 5 years ago because they moved their previously good CS program which was based on a wide variety of technologies like nix, mainframe, lisp, java, C, etc.. to being totally based on Mircosoft products... the new program was Visual-this, Visual-that, blah blah... I left and went to a school that was still focused on teaching people *Computer* Science and not *Microsoft* Science.
It may not be beans in the whole scheme of things, but they lost my $25000 because of their "deal" with Microsoft. - Jag197, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4What a silly comment.
I would trust Microsoft with my data above all companies other than financial ones. This is MICROSOFT we're talking about, they KNOW if they do something even slightly dubious with users private data then the world will be screaming for their heads in about thirty seconds flat. - sinner0423, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6People with humor are hard to find, we're a dying breed.
- Zolk, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5So in other words Microsoft wants to force college students to use Internet Explorer? (That's the only browser Live Mail supports.)
- jahutch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@ Drakhnon
I'm not so sure. Maybe Adobe has better licensing deals than Apple. Also, they have to deal with the fact that *most* students will be buying a new computer, so if Macintosh is required, there's seldom issue since all new Macs come with OS X. If Macs *are not* required, then choosing to use one is something someone can decide to do, but they can't expect the university to provide them cheap software for it. Heck, I'm a Mac user myself, but I know I am in the EXTREME minority.
Again, smaller schools don't even offer Windows, etc cheap. I'm at William and Mary Law School, and when you throw in the undergrads, our campus has about 10,000 students total. And nope, NO software cheap, MS or otherwise. Only exception is an anti-virus program. "Cheap" means you buy the academic version from newegg. In my experience only the biggest (Tech had 26,000 students) or richest universities provide their students site licensed software. Certain depts may make exceptions, but for the general student, that's how it is. - ByteGuerilla, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yes that's a separate thing. That's the MSDN Academic Alliance. It's been around since before Live, and my University (University of Manchester) is a member. As a result, we get Microsoft development tools and operating systems for free. It's a nice bonus for us English with our high sales tax.
- leboff, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5if it was google you'd be saying "oh cool"
- dipswitch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The ads would probably break PGP, which is a _really_ bad idea. Bonus kudos to you my friend!
- SP33DFR34K, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I'm not so thrilled about this, even if it was Google doing it. Here are the reasons why:
Granted you do have a problem with your email account, for whatever reasons, support will be much easier. You can simply call up your systems that maintain the web mail service and they will probably be able to solve the problem relatively quickly. Its much easier for a systems staff to give you support if they are only maintain one web mail of lets say roughly, 30,000 email accounts versus the millions 3rd party company does. You can just call up and say I'm having problem with so and so. You will more likely speak to someone that knows what is going on, than an operator that is probably oblivious to any malfunctions.
Reminds me of the one time that our web mail server hardware failed. They did repair the problem promptly. But I thought, what would have happened if some outside company was doing this? Would they have all the backups to be able to restore the web mail? Backing up millions of webmail accounts is costly in hardware, and would these 3rd party companies back everything up?
Also, because the university (systems) decides how to implement the web mail service, they can add more features that generally wouldn't be available to some free services. With both POP and IMAP support. Without either one of those two, university web mail would just stink. I may just be a niche, but I don't login to our school web mail via a web browser, but instead use a mail client like Thunderbird instead. The features, UI, and functionality greatly surpass the school's web-based email. So even though it may suck, at least it has features implemented making things much better.
Another thing to add to the feature is list, is my CS e-mail account. This was really what I liked. They pretty much setup a bunch of different web mail implementation for us to use and let the CS students decide on which ones they liked. While personally, I did not like the web mail thing too much (it was GMail, but slow), it still makes me feel good that the CS department puts extra effort in providing the tools necessary to increase our computing needs. I hardly doubt any 3rd party company would offer such a service like this. On a side note, one of the web mail service that was beta tested had a nasty exploit, good thing people caught that before it could have been chosen as the web mail choice for the CS dept.
Lastly, with the one privacy issue going on and subpoenas, I really do not like the idea of a big company having access to my web mail. Although, if the government really wanted to, they would subpoena my school's system for the information, but that is very unlikely. The likely hood of Microsoft getting subpoena is more likely. - adml_shake, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3That's becoming more and more of a problem I'm sorry to say, my own school is looking at dropping the Novel, Cisco, Java, and various other programs in favor of all MS based Tech. The students and most of the department staff are in a uproar about it, but I get the feeling it's falling on dollar stuffed ears...
- cybersamurai, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5umm... anybody know what 72 colleges microsoft has reached agreements with?
- GreenfireStorm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I WISH my college could find a partner.
Right now we have a crappy 10MB capacity mailbox. It wouldn't be so bad, but every freaking club has your email and has no concept that a .pdf file is NOT the best way to distribute information by email.
I can't go 3 days before its full =( - electrichead, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I'm not upset at having learned those languages / databases. I'm upset that I was forced to learn only those and not others. The options we were given were because of the deals the college had, not because those were what were in demand at the time. There's a small difference.
- kajoob, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6I have found one of the schools that is participating....
http://www.ashanet.org/projects/project-view.php?p=327 - kimos, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Rather than signing away student dollars to forced advertizing and name placement by an (evil) third party company, your college should invest in some competent admins. Mail doesn't disappear just becuase Microsoft didn't deliver it...
- albrad84, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I seriously wish my school would do this. Our web e-mail client is so bad it makes hotmail look like the greatest thing on earth (and this is coming from someone who really hates hotmail).
Using gmail would be preferable, but I would still be happy with this. - strcmp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Haha. Terrible, but funny.
- orangetiki, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Gee, I wonder why there not in any art colleges...... 8)
sorry had to add that in - kg4gyt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I think that list is MSDN members, not participating schools
- digjedi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Smart move by MS, get someone hooked on the MS account then once they leave college will not stop using it since "all their college buddies" use that MS email account to reach them. Same reason it seems all AOL use - I don't want to quit cause I had that email account for ages.
And to continue to hook users early MS will start offering free email accounts in McDonald Happy Meals and in the end when someone is born the hospital will present the parents with the newborns email address along with the birth certificate. - pneill, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Won't make much of a difference. Students come to universities already with pre-established e-mail/web identities that they simply refuse to give up. Few students actually use their university e-mail accounts on a regular basis.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I am not a MS shareholder..and ca say that in the Live account that I didn't use for filling in internet forms, I NEVER get SPAM.
In my Gmail account that I have NEVER given out to ANYONE, I do get SPAM that does not get caught by their filters. And this is an account with an ID name that is not common at all. (two letters and 5 numbers.)
If you think that Gmail is still the industry leader in web based e-mail, YOU must be a stockholder who blindly praises your product. Like everything Gmail has done other than the search engine, they are just a middle of hte pack company. - dongiaconia, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Yea, no digg if there is no way to determine what colleges...
- Aslan72, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2If you think about the clients, it really makes sense. We've had an e-mail address, historically, for our 20,000 students at my University. The majority, now, opt to forward that e-mail off to another gmail, hotmail, msn, or yahoo account. Why should we keep the thousands of dollars of hardware up to date? Why not just foist that responsiblity off to someone else that they are going to use anyway? It's not really 'outsourcing' as much as it is admitting that the service people are using is an o.k. service to use.
- Brilhasti, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Do those colleges only have 1 student?
Should've read: students'
Grammar be good! - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You mean BESIDES the fact that the words Microsoft and Insecure are redunant?
- ZekeSulastin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Real-world education, my friend - however great Linux is, it is nowhere NEAR as common as Windows.
- OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1[quote]MS dose some nice things for schools. I got a legal copy of XP Pro and now there Live service is also nice.[/quote]
And you think they do this out of the goodness of their hearts?
People worry about moves like this because of:
1. Anticompetitive practices which give MS an illegal advantage.
2. Decreasing lack of choice for consumers.
3. Mediocrity promoted over quality. - karamba_kid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1College students should be forced into running their own mail servers.
- cdreiling, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I implemented a thing called campus cruiser at my University. It started out free and was to tie into web advisor. It sucked and they began charging.
On the plus side student emails remained private and no one had access to read them. Student Life had a habit of wanting to request email records which I was unwilling to give. - narduk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I hate Baylor Outlook Web Mail. I use gmail for almost all of my correspondence with professors. Wish Baylor would be next.
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