Amid grumbles from scores of students and faculty members, the University is considering shifting from the webmail client it has used for several years to a more modernized email program.
The University currently uses Sun Java System Messenger Express 6.2, an application last updated in 2004 and far behind current technologies. "We are aware that our current webmail is not as robust as some of the more modern clients," said Steven Sather, an OIT associate director.
Sather said that OIT is considering using a more modern client that offers better application-like experience and increased storage capacity. One major concern, he said, is that security and privacy might be affected if the University's email service is outsourced to a third party like Google, Microsoft or Yahoo, all of which offer sophisticated, free webmail programs.
The information technology committee of the USG proposed switching to Google's Gmail as a way to improve students' email experience, discussing the possibility of a change at a USG Senate meeting in October and lobbying OIT for the change. Phil Stern '09, the committee's chair, said in an email that the current client "has a number of problems and unfortunately no updated version exists for an upgrade."
One major issue with the current system is that it currently offers a maximum of 200 megabytes of space, compared to the more than 5,000 megabytes of storage that come with a free Gmail account.
Katie Hsih '10 uses Mozilla Thunderbird because she has "lots of problems with the webmail program," she said. "The storage space is too small, and the search feature isn't very good," she added.
Matt Russell '09, who checks his mail through Microsoft Outlook, said he has nearly exhausted the 200 megabyte allotment in his account. "I do use Outlook instead of webmail, but the storage space is really a problem," he said. "I always have to delete messages with attachments to free up space." Russell uses his Princeton account as his primary account and routinely receives emails that take up several megabytes of space.
Though Hsih, Russell and other students routinely approach their quotas, Sather said "most students never even reach the current limits." But, he added, "at some point in the future the email quota will be adjusted up again," possibly as soon as next semester.
In the long term, however, the outdated webmail client will need to be replaced because its features are lacking in comparison to other systems'.
"OIT has been looking at other webmail clients, many of which incorporate AJAX functionality like drag and drop and provide a much more robust, application-like experience," Stern said.
Features like search in Google's Gmail, he added, are far more advanced than those of the Sun Java webmail client. "OIT is in the process of testing some of these clients and will probably be doing student pilots as they get further into the process."
There are several obstacles, however, when it comes to choosing a new client. Last spring, OIT tested the Gmail and Windows Live email clients among a group of students, and the results were mixed.
"There was not a strong consensus that either of these was significantly better than what currently existed," Sather said. One of these reasons was technical: It was hard to use Gmail with popular mail programs like Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird and Mac Mail because it did not offer compatibility for the IMAP protocol. That feature has since been added.
OIT is most concerned about privacy issues that could arise from using an outside email service, Sather said. University webmail is managed and stored on servers on campus, and the University has complete control over those servers. If the University were to use Google or Microsoft webmail, then the contents of every account would be stored off campus on servers not owned by the University.
"If a court order ever came for email records, Google or Microsoft may handle such requests differently than would the University," Sather explained. "The University uses email for several things which some people consider confidential — from library records to exchanges with faculty about grades — and there is a concern over the University sending that information off campus."
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