With a higher storage quota and a more robust interface, CSUN is beginning to organize a transition from their current e-mail system to Gmail. Three other Cal State Universities: Fullerton, Easy Bay and San Marcos have already transitioned to the new e-mail system.

‘I talked to each campus because I go to a conference every month and they all had good responses,’ said Nicole Umali, the A.S. vice president. ‘East Bay said the hardest part was the transition process from one e-mail system to another e-mail system. There is a transition space where students will have to delete all their mail or move it manually to their Gmail account if they wanted to use that.’

Chris Xanthos, senior director for project management and application services, will be in charge of helping students with the transitioning process. If everything gets approved, Xanthos would like to have everyone switched over to the new Gmail accounts by the end of the school year.

‘Our goal is to have everyone migrated prior to a month before finals in the spring semester,’ Xanthos said. ‘We don’t want the hassle or the distraction of trying to migrate a mail account while students are studying for finals and completely their semester projects,’ Xanthos said. ‘It will be the click of a button for the students to say go ahead and move my e-mail.’

One advantage of switching to Gmail, Xanthos said, is that the new e-mail system would be free of charge to the university. The current system costs the university approximately $125,000 a year.

‘They have a program where any active student in a university can receive an account free of charge and add space. However, the student can still keep that Google account for life. The only difference is that once they leave the university they will start to see the ad space.’

Some students are not thrilled with the current e-mail system. Sophomore Jeneya Freeman said she thinks the current e-mail system is okay but she never gets any of her e-mails.

‘A professor will send something out and I’ll have to contact him and have him send it to another e-mail address because I never get it,’ she said. ‘If it’s better, if it was convenient, if my stuff came through there then I definitely would (use the new e-mail). As long as we don’t have to go through a whole set up process and start all over it sounds really cool.’

Xanthos said there are benefits and changes that will occur with this e-mail system.

‘Traditionally they currently only have about a 40 megabytes quota on their CSUN e-mail and they will have a 6.5 gigabytes of storage quota,’ he said. ‘They will have a substantial increase on the quota size.’

People involved in organizing the switch think it is going to be a positive change, Umali said. Gmail will make e-mail easier for students and with the increase in storage quota, there will be more room in their inbox so students e-mail’s don’t bounce back.

‘I’m looking forward to it actually,’ Umali said. ‘I think it will benefit the students. I’ve heard nothing but good things about it so I can’t really say that there is something bad about it. Gmail is so handy, I think people are going to want to use it as opposed to Hotmail.’