New students (Freshman, Transfer & general Graduate) for Fall semester have an e-mail account waiting for them upon their arrival at UND. Students attending Summer Orientation received their addresses at that time. They will need to activate their account when they arrive on campus. Any mail sent to the address prior to activation is returned to the sender. Addresses have the general format of firstname_lastname@und.nodak.edu (this will vary depending on how unique their name is). Students who didn't attend orientation still have an address and will find out what it is as part of the activation process.
This E-mail system is new and is being hosted on a UNIX system here at UND and is maintained by staff at the Computer Center. This change will not impact accounts already being provided by colleges/departments (i.e. computer science or School of Medicine accounts) but is meant to be issued instead of plains, badlands, and prairie accounts. Returning students with accounts on these systems will continue to use them.
One of the challenges of providing e-mail has been to have a full featured e-mail system that works within a lab/cluster setting. PINE works in such a setting but handling attachments is quite a challenge. POP mail programs such as Eudora and Netscape have the features but don't work in a lab/cluster since mail is stored on the local microcomputer.
An advantage of the new system is that it is IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol). This means that the mail is stored on the server (the UNIX host) but by using IMAP software the student is able to access the mail using a graphical (point & click) interface, even in a computer lab type setting. Accessing this e-mail requires special software (IMAP or POP) since the e-mail address doesn't have aa UNIX account associated with it you can't telnet to it.
The North Dakota Higher Education Computer Network (ND-HECN) has purchased copies of IMAP software called Mulberry for computer labs and clusters. It is available for Windows95 and Macintosh. If you are a lab/cluster manager and would like a copy of Mulberry please contact Doris Bornhoeft at doris@sage.und.nodak.edu. Distribution of the software for other than labs/clusters has yet to be determined. Students with their own computers connected to the Internet may use programs such as Eudora or Netscape.
Training sessions will be offered at the beginning of Fall semester. The schedule will be announced via the University Letter and on the Computer Center web page, CCinfo (http://www.und.nodak.edu/dept/CC). Documentation re: Mulberry is also available on CCinfo.