Michigan State University's Email System
Recently, the college that I attended some five years ago updated their email system, giving their web interface appearance a facelift and adding functionality that makes it easier to use. This is great, but the old interface that was in place back when I first started going to the college in 2000 was pretty archaic even for standards back in those days.
Now, in 2009, they've done an update and the new system feels very 2004. It's old and clunky, and at times confusing. For example, if you're reading one of your email messages and click the "Delete this message" button, the interface whirs and clicks, and when it's done processing, it dumps you inside of the next email message inside of your inbox, instead of just taking you back to your inbox. This is disorienting and annoying, but forgivable.
One major problem I have with the new system: the total amount is disk space that they've given us to store our emails is 128 MB. It's right at the top of the screen, letting you know that you're using x.x MB of 128 MB of space, and presumably, once you've used it all up, they'll start rejecting your emails when people try to send them to you. This constraint is crap. 128 MB is not a lot of space these days, particularly if you're passing around photos or sending around other files as attachments between classmates.
I just did a Google Shopping search for hard drives, and the first one that came up was a Toshiba 500 GB hard drive for $88. Assuming that 1 GB is 1000 MB (which is technically inexact, but bear with me), you do the math and find that 128 MB of storage space costs about 2 cents.
2 cents of disk space is what they are giving to each student? Seriously? Additionally, my estimate is probably way too high. If you buy in bulk, with the kind of purchasing power that I'm sure Michigan State University has, you can probably get 500 GB of memory for a hell of a lot cheaper than $88 dollars. I'd be surprised if it were costing them anything more than 1/5th of a cent in hard disk space (I'm guessing here).
Allocating 128 MB of space per student email box would be okay at this point in time if they had upgraded the system to use Solid-State drives, but based on how slow the whole thing is running, that's probably not the case.
Of course, I am ignoring the other carrying costs of storing emails for students, like the cost of powering the servers that store all that email, which is an ongoing expense for them. And the more emails that they store, the more bandwidth is going to be consumed by students who are accessing their email archives. But I don't think it can possibly be that much. Not when you consider how much each of us paid (or our parents paid) to let us attend school there for a few years.
This doesn't affect me much because I don't even use MSU's crappy email system anyway. However, I do send a lot of text messages, and about once every two to three weeks, I get a friendly message from Verizon saying that I'm using about 80% of my allotted text message storage, with a warning to delete old messages or else they'll start bouncing my incoming messages. Usually this happens around the time I have 40 or so messages in my inbox and my sent folders.
@Verizon: Really? Are you serious?
I'm not sure if the disk space is on my phone's hardware or if the text messages themselves are stored on a remote Verizon computer server somewhere. That's an interesting question, but it's 2009. I bought my current phone about a year ago. They're shouldn't be any constraint on my text message storage space, and if there is, it should be high enough that I don't notice it for several years.
Perhaps this wouldn't bother me so much if I really thought that Verizon was deleting my old text messages from their system when I delete all of them on my phone. If I had to speculate, I'd say that they aren't. They're probably keeping them around in perpetuity, if for no other reason than they can use them to cover their ass later if a lawsuit ever arises. If they're going to keep that information around for themselves, it should be available to me. I should have the option of accessing it when I want.
When you delete something from a Gmail account, it doesn't disappear from existence completely, but at least each person is given enough storage space that it's unlikely they'll have to make anyone "delete" emails, thereby making them inaccessible to the person who's email box it is.
Privacy and control issues aside, it's odd that Verizon would risk annoying its customers with such a high frequency just to save on some disk space. It's cheap, really cheap. My alma mater might get a pass from me because they're legally a "non-profit", but for a company like Verizon, there's no reason for them to do it.
Now, in 2009, they've done an update and the new system feels very 2004. It's old and clunky, and at times confusing. For example, if you're reading one of your email messages and click the "Delete this message" button, the interface whirs and clicks, and when it's done processing, it dumps you inside of the next email message inside of your inbox, instead of just taking you back to your inbox. This is disorienting and annoying, but forgivable.
One major problem I have with the new system: the total amount is disk space that they've given us to store our emails is 128 MB. It's right at the top of the screen, letting you know that you're using x.x MB of 128 MB of space, and presumably, once you've used it all up, they'll start rejecting your emails when people try to send them to you. This constraint is crap. 128 MB is not a lot of space these days, particularly if you're passing around photos or sending around other files as attachments between classmates.
I just did a Google Shopping search for hard drives, and the first one that came up was a Toshiba 500 GB hard drive for $88. Assuming that 1 GB is 1000 MB (which is technically inexact, but bear with me), you do the math and find that 128 MB of storage space costs about 2 cents.
2 cents of disk space is what they are giving to each student? Seriously? Additionally, my estimate is probably way too high. If you buy in bulk, with the kind of purchasing power that I'm sure Michigan State University has, you can probably get 500 GB of memory for a hell of a lot cheaper than $88 dollars. I'd be surprised if it were costing them anything more than 1/5th of a cent in hard disk space (I'm guessing here).
Allocating 128 MB of space per student email box would be okay at this point in time if they had upgraded the system to use Solid-State drives, but based on how slow the whole thing is running, that's probably not the case.
Of course, I am ignoring the other carrying costs of storing emails for students, like the cost of powering the servers that store all that email, which is an ongoing expense for them. And the more emails that they store, the more bandwidth is going to be consumed by students who are accessing their email archives. But I don't think it can possibly be that much. Not when you consider how much each of us paid (or our parents paid) to let us attend school there for a few years.
This doesn't affect me much because I don't even use MSU's crappy email system anyway. However, I do send a lot of text messages, and about once every two to three weeks, I get a friendly message from Verizon saying that I'm using about 80% of my allotted text message storage, with a warning to delete old messages or else they'll start bouncing my incoming messages. Usually this happens around the time I have 40 or so messages in my inbox and my sent folders.
@Verizon: Really? Are you serious?
I'm not sure if the disk space is on my phone's hardware or if the text messages themselves are stored on a remote Verizon computer server somewhere. That's an interesting question, but it's 2009. I bought my current phone about a year ago. They're shouldn't be any constraint on my text message storage space, and if there is, it should be high enough that I don't notice it for several years.
Perhaps this wouldn't bother me so much if I really thought that Verizon was deleting my old text messages from their system when I delete all of them on my phone. If I had to speculate, I'd say that they aren't. They're probably keeping them around in perpetuity, if for no other reason than they can use them to cover their ass later if a lawsuit ever arises. If they're going to keep that information around for themselves, it should be available to me. I should have the option of accessing it when I want.
When you delete something from a Gmail account, it doesn't disappear from existence completely, but at least each person is given enough storage space that it's unlikely they'll have to make anyone "delete" emails, thereby making them inaccessible to the person who's email box it is.
Privacy and control issues aside, it's odd that Verizon would risk annoying its customers with such a high frequency just to save on some disk space. It's cheap, really cheap. My alma mater might get a pass from me because they're legally a "non-profit", but for a company like Verizon, there's no reason for them to do it.