Purdue University College of Liberal Arts

Information Technology

E-Mail Client Recommendations

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As the use of electronic mail has increased over the years, the programs we have used to send and receive messages have evolved. In fact, at least two computers are involved in every message exchange:

  • Client: You run an e-mail client program on your computer. Commonly-used clients have included Microsoft Outlook, Eudora, Netscape Messenger, Microsoft Outlook Express, and Pegasus.

An older, alternate method for accessing e-mail was to use a remote access program such as Telnet to run a command-line (keyboard-based) e-mail client on a Unix mainframe system. Unix-based e-mail clients included Mail, Elm, and Pine.

  • Server: Your e-mail client interacts with a central server computer on the network. Messages that arrive for you are held at the server until you download and/or delete them via your e-mail client. E-mail servers on campus include the central Purdue Mail*Hub (also known as postoffice.purdue.edu and as the e-mail function of your Purdue Career Account) and Liberal Arts' own Microsoft Exchange server.

If your only e-mail address is of the form user@purdue.edu, you use the Purdue Mail*Hub server. If your primary e-mail address is similar to user@sla.purdue.edu, you have an account on Liberal Arts' Microsoft Exchange e-mail server.

SLA IT has supported many of the clients and servers that faculty and staff have used over the years. Today, we recommend that faculty and staff obtain a Liberal Arts (Microsoft Exchange) server account and use the Microsoft Outlook 2000 (or newer, for Windows) or Microsoft Outlook 2001 (for Macintosh) client.

Although Outlook can be configured as the client to accounts on various kinds of e-mail servers, we strongly recommend (and, for this document, assume) the use of Outlook with the Purdue e-mail server -- i.e. an @purdue.edu address.

Please note, by the way, that Outlook and Outlook Express are different programs. This discussion is about Outlook, not Outlook Express.

Here are CLA IT's Top 14 Reasons Why We Recommend Microsoft Outlook:

14. Server-based anti-virus features. Now that e-mail has become the primary mechanism through which computer viruses spread, it is vital that we make studied choices about opening message file attachments we receive. Outlook users are protected from most e-mail-borne viruses; our Exchange server scans attachments for known viruses and disinfects them before the messages are placed in your mailbox.

13. Windows integration. In the Windows operating system, you can conveniently send files via Outlook e-mail in both the Windows Explorer (right-click the file and choose "Send To Mail Recipient") and in the various Microsoft Office programs (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access; select the File menu and choose one of the "Send to Mail Recipient" options).

12. Web browser integration. In a browser (such as Internet Explorer or Firefox), clicking an e-mail link on a web page will open an Outlook new message window, allowing message composition using a familiar interface. A copy of your outgoing message, once sent, will be retained in Outlook with your other sent items.

11. Global address list. CLA IT maintains an address book which contains the names and up-to-date e-mail addresses for every faculty and staff member in the School of Liberal Arts. This "global address list," which also includes a variety of multi-recipient distribution lists, is only available to Outlook users. That we maintain this list means you have instant access to hundreds of e-mail addresses without having to maintain similar entries in your own address book.

10. Outlook can import mail and addresses from various versions of Eudora, Netscape 4.0 and earlier, and Outlook Express.

9. Calendar. Outlook's built-in calendar feature helps you manage your daily schedule and, optionally, share it with others. If you have an administrative assistant or secretary, he or she can use Outlook to help you manage your schedule electronically from his or her own computer.

8. Schedule meetings quickly and easily. Outlook can quickly determine dates and times at which an entire group of people would be available to meet. Days of tedious work coordinating schedules ("Next Thursday at 2:30?" "Sue and Bob can make it, but I'm in class, and I think Donna might be out of town. Better check with Zack, too ...") can be eliminated by using Outlook.

7. Outlook 2001 for Macintosh is features-comparable to Outlook 2000 for Windows. Calendars can be shared, meetings can be planned, etc. among both Mac and Windows users.

6. Contacts. A complete personal information manager is built in. You can use it to store e-mail addresses, postal addresses, phone numbers, nicknames, birthdays, etc.

5. Your mailbox is stored on our e-mail server, so you can access your complete collection of messages from multiple locations (office, home, etc.). Your contacts and calendar are also accessible from anywhere. (If you use an older version of, say, Eudora at both the office and home, you've probably contended with having access only to a subset of your messages at one or the other location. With Outlook, all of your messages are available to you everywhere.)

4. World-wide access. You may access everything in your Outlook mailbox (e-mail, contacts, calendar, etc.) from any Internet-connected computer in the world which has a modern web browser (Internet Explorer 5 or newer, or Netscape 4 or newer).

3. You can take it with you. Outlook integrates well with personal digital assistants (the Palm Pilot series of devices and competitors). Enter new appointments and contacts into your Palm or into Outlook on your computer; they'll be kept fully synchronized with the touch of one button.

2. Multiple e-mail accounts. Outlook (the Windows versions) can be configured to monitor your Liberal Arts e-mail account and multiple other accounts. If you maintain e-mail accounts with off-campus services such as Yahoo or HotMail, Outlook can handle them for you.

1. Did we mention Outlook's anti-virus features? People who have Liberal Arts e-mail accounts have, for the most part, been able to simply ignore the last several major virus outbreaks. They are secure in the knowledge that we stop most viruses at the server level. Virus-generated messages are cleaned of their destructive payloads before Outlook users even see the messages.



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