Those of us who still live in a cave use the FAS Webmail application to check our e-mail may have noticed that we now have the option to try a brand spanking new interface. This "FAS Beta" is, we will admit, slightly spiffier and simpler, but apparently, its only purpose is to improve security while FAS IT performs a great e-mail migration over the next several months.

According to Noah S. Selsby '95, senior client technology adviser for FAS IT, FAS Beta is not a full-fledged new version of FAS Webmail, but rather a temporary upgrade while FAS IT moves student FAS accounts to Mail2World, the company behind the "@College" domain. Faculty and staff accounts will be migrating to Microsoft Exchange, a process he says is estimated to take eight months.

Meanwhile, FAS IT has included shiny new features for users to enjoy in FAS Beta during this transition period. Some of these include the removal of Webmail-based email filters (apparently works better now), better foreign language support (¡bueno!), an improved address book (better for stalking), and better support for attachments and HTML messages (make emails bigger and brighter).

As for the spam problem that occasionally occurs when e-mails are forwarded to Gmail, Selsby says the current proposed solution is a feature that forces @College to keep copies of all emails that are forwarded instead of automatically deleting them.

FlyBy assumes this means we will have to keep checking all of email accounts periodically until the flight to freedom is complete.