By Rebecca A. Doyle
More than 400 people attended the Information Technology Division’s (ITD) E-Mail Expo last week. The information fair was designed to give all University computer users a peek at some of the available or soon-to-be-available electronic mail packages that can be used to replace the MTS Message System.
Although ITD has not set a date, it is expected that by next fall many users will have turned to other electronic mail packages for messaging, conferencing, file transfer and connecting to other networks.
E-Mail Expo allowed all users—not just network administrators or department heads—to see programs that may be supported by ITD and to find one that will work best in their environments.
“Everyone has different needs. It is very individualized across campus,” says Judith A. Dean, computer systems consultant for ITD. “Students, faculty and staff all have different needs.”
Participants at the information fair were able to view packages that meet either present or projected requirements, including such advanced technology as multimedia transfer and electronic forms.
Dean says one of the goals of the fair was to make sure that there were plenty of knowledgeable people around to talk to about individual needs. Some of those include pilot users—those who have been testing the programs or have purchased a version because they had already done some research on what would fill their own needs.
ITD also gave participants a chance to become pilot users themselves. Included in material given to those who attended the program was a sign-up sheet for those interested in testing even more extensively the programs ITD may support.
A station also was set up for Institutional File System (IFS) registration. IFS is the University’s file sharing, storage and retrieval system, and requires a Uniqname and Kerberos password. Both are available at no charge to U-M faculty, staff and students through the ITD Accounts Office at the Michigan Union computing site.
E-Mail Expo was sponsored by ITD, with support from Apple Computer and Microsoft.
