3 comments by 1 or more people

1. Did you actually try using squirrel? A bunch of us do use it, and I’m guessing we have the same status as you. Unless there’s something you’re not telling us… ;0)

   02 Mar 2007, 14:27

2. There seem to be a number of categories: UG, PG/T, staff, and research students. Undergraduates and taught postgraduates go together, and staff and research students go together. We’re not staff but our taught postgrad year is behind us :( :( :’(

   Personally I would have thought that the average student requires more functionality from their email system than the average member of staff. Certainly the most demanding student would require an equal, if not higher, level of functionality as the most demanding academic.

   Although one would suspect that any of the described individuals would be happy with something that worked and didn’t crash losing lots and lots of mail.

   02 Mar 2007, 16:06

3. Under various laws, including the Data Protection Act, UK businesses are required to archive email for a period of several years for auditing purposes and investigations. I guess anyone whose status is higher than that of a taught postgraduate is considered to be something akin to an employee of the university and so the university is obliged to store their email correspondence. This necessitates the use of MS Exchange, Groupwise or other accredited email systems and is probably why the university keeps telling us to switch over to using the staff system.

   It does not really explain why the university still gives everyone a SquirrelMail account anyway and lets you redirect mail wherever you want. There is currently nothing to stop you using SquirrelMail if you want to. I’ve been using it happily for the last few years and whilst the Groupwise system was always unreliable, I noticed almost no down time on the SquirrelMail system except when there was some kind of infrastructure problem affecting the whole campus network.

   02 Mar 2007, 18:14