Helpdesk

Your mail sucks. The password is always getting locked. Your mailbox is always full. You have viruses and spam out the wazoo. Your "Personal Mail Folder" is always getting corrupted. And all of your outgoing mail is tagged with an obnoxious multi-line disclaimer of questionable legality and certain idiocy.

There really isn't a need to put up with all of this- there are better ways to handle mail.

The problem is Outlook (the program you run on your computer) and Exchange as run by Mednet. The solution: don't use Outlook and don't use Mednet.

The Server

First, the server part. You can get an email address from Bruin Online instead. BOL gives accounts to any UCLA student or staff, you just have to request one. The benefits to a BOL UCLA address are many fold:

• Shorter address (jbruin@ucla.edu instead of jbruin@mednet.ucla.edu)
• More space (BOL offers 50MB, Mednet 15MB)
• BOL provides spam tagging, making it easier to sort out junk mail
• BOL doesn't attach an obnoxious multi-line disclaimer of questionable legality and certain idiocy to your email
• BOL isn't violently hostile to non-Windows users.
• The satisfaction that comes from knowing you are not using a mail server from a criminally convicted monopolist.

There are, however, some downsides to switching from a Mednet address to a BOL one:

• You still have to receive mail from annoying Mednet accounts.
• The Microsoft Way means that some "integrated" features will no longer work (see note on calendars below).

The Client

While technically you can continue to use Outlook with a BOL email account (and benefit from all the pluses mentioned above), there really isn't a point to using Outlook if you are not chained to The Microsoft Way. BOL uses Internet standard protocols for communications, so pretty much any email client can be used - you actually now have a choice! This is how it used to be before Microsoft's business practices took the computing world hostage. Also, note that many of these products actually address shortcomings in Outlook, shortcomings Microsoft would never admit to (cf Internet Explorer and Firefox).

Benefits to using something other than Outlook:

• Threat of mail-attached virus infection reduced greatly.
• You can choose something you like
• Many have advanced spam controls

Downsides:

• You might have to spend 1 day getting used to a new interface. If you are unable to do this, then it is advised that you stop using the Internet as you represent a grave hazard to those around you (and by "around", we mean "EVERYWHERE"). Really, you spent some time learning Outlook at one point, what makes you think it's OK to have to stop learning ever again?

Since there are so many clients now available to you, this document cannot cover them all. MacOS X users are encouraged to use Apple's Mail.app. It's slick and its interface has the polish Apple users have come to expect. For Windows users, here are links to a few that we recommend:

• Thunderbird is the email client brought to you by the fine folks in the Mozilla group, makers of a fine browser called Firefox, which you may have heard of.
• Sylpheed Claws is a mail client with many features advanced users might appreciate.

Note: Eudora is not recommended. However, UCLA users do have access to a site-license, so if you'd prefer, you can use it. See! Isn't choice nice!

Calendar

One important note: Mednet's Exchange+Outlook combination provides a calendar feature. Some people like it. BOL doesn't provide such a feature. You can continue to use Outlook+Mednet for calendaring, even if you switch email providers/client. Microsoft would like you believe that email and calendaring are one and the same (they are not), and keep you tied to their product. Their success is largely due to perpetuating falsehoods like this and keeping their users ignorant of such details.

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