By Lorianne Flint
Post Office and Post Office v.3, the e-mail managers on Route Y, will only be available for the next few days. Instead, students are being directed to use a different program, BYU?s new Basic Email system.
?The old system, which was seven years old, was falling apart and we needed a new system,? said Russell Allred, a product manager with the Office of Information Technology. ?You?ve asked for a more reliable and faster system, this is now it.?
The system will be more secure, have 20 megabytes of space and e-mail can be accessed by a protocol called IMAP. Other advantages to it include the ability to create rules and organize folders, Allred said.
It will also allow university mass mailings to be delivered to the inbox. Yahoo usually won?t allow these mailings because it thinks it is spam due to the large number of people it?s being sent to.
So far, about 5,000 students have switched over, but the IT Office expects many more to change their emailing system soon.
But whether or not students enable the new basic system or not, on March 25, Post Office v.3 will be shut down. On April 4, Post Office will be taken away and if students haven?t started their Basic Email account, they can no longer receive mail in their previous accounts.
Allred also said to make sure the e-mail account on the personal profile is the one students want the university to send e-mails to.
For students like senior Tyler Briggs who use another e-mail service provider, there?s no need to set up the basic e-mail system.
?I don?t think it?ll actually impact a lot of people because the majority of people use something else,? said Briggs, from Park City, majoring in communications. ?It?s not necessary for me because I?m used to using my Hotmail account.?
Allred suggested all students start sending e-mails to people in their contact list to let them know of the change in e-mail systems. With the new system, the domain @email.byu.edu will no longer be used. It will be replaced by @byu.net.
?At some point you have to tell everyone of the address change,? Allred said. ?That?s one of the ramifications of switching e-mail systems.?
When students enable their Basic Email system, they will also be encouraged to create an alias. The alias acts as a forwarding agent so students can give out their alias e-mail address and never worry about getting e-mail if they happen to change e-mail accounts in the future. As long as the address the alias is forwarding mail to is current, students can always receive their mail.