To the Email working group, Divisional Reps, and other interested folks: The stated direction for electronic mail is to move toward Qualcomm's commerical Eudora software package. This is a critical issue for MS Mail clients, since support from Microsoft has ended and MS Mail is incapable of scaling up to a larger and larger on-campus client base. We anticipate that MCIS support for MS Mail will be discontinued at some point, but we currently do not have an ending date specified. Pegasus Mail clients using the DOS version will continue to use it, since there is no DOS client for Eudora. Client Services will be continuing to encourage clients to move away from the DOS platform. Pegasus Mail clients using the Windows version may elect to stay with PMail since it does provide POP3 support. Current problems in dealing with email attachments seem to be due to the Charon gateway through which the mail messages for some people currently travel; we are in the process replacing this with "Mercury" which will improve handling of attachments. While the MCIS stated direction is toward Eudora, there are four major issues we must address successfully in order to roll out Eudora support across campus: (1) document how to create and read attachments. Not always an easy, painfree process regardless of your email package. Can we make it easier, so that students and faculty and other mobile users don't have to carry around and refer to the instructions? (2) provide a pre-built address list for Eudora users like MS Mail now provides, and providing special-purpose lists e.g. class lists. Without this, each Eudora user would have to build his/her own list of names and email addresses. Not many MS Mail users would look kindly toward Eudora without a pre-built list. We will be looking into whether this can be accomplished through Ph. (3) further testing is needed along with resulting decisions/actions to implement an easy configuration and distribution process. Rolling the product out to 20,000 or so clients demands that we be as efficient as possible. (4) further development and testing is needed regarding the POP3 server. The email committee's stated direction is to have a departmental Novell server (where it exists) act as the POP3 server. Where a departmental LAN does not exist, MIAVX1 will provide that service (preferably, not the interactive machine). MCIS will be investigating whether to provide POP3 service off the VM/CMS system. There are new versions of Eudora for the Mac and Eudora for Windows coming out in mid-August. I have an email message from Qualcomm (with, count them...no less than 9 attachments -- guaranteed to challenge your ability to deal with attachments) -- with the details. "Eudora Lite" is the new name for the freeware version. The commercial version will be "Eudora Pro for the Mac" and "Eudora Pro for Windows." Both Pro versions will have an integrated spell-checker -- welcome news. I will be happy to forward the email message to you (Mac folks) or to send you paper copies (IBM-compatible folks). The file has a .SEA file (self-extracting archive), which only runs on Macs. We are considering the site license (in the $20,000-$25,000 range as of earlier this spring), but it doesn't make sense to do that and start paying for annual support of $3,500 until we have addressed the four main issues above. We will be working on these issues. Individual copies are $44.50 (ed. price) for the complete package, $178.75 for a 5 user pack ($26.75), $535 for a 20 user pack ($26.75 each), with larger packs available. Departments or schools interested in licensing all faculty/staff can buy large license packs and reduce the per unit cost. Several clients on campus have already purchased the commerical Eudora, are using it as their mail package and are quite happy with it. Please let me know if you have comments or questions, or if you'd like to receive the detailed Eudora info mentionned above. Thanks, Debi Allison 95327