Live@EDU or Google App for Education

The school’s IT infrastructure is terrible to the point of being shocking. The @tongji.edu.cn email is practically unused, except for important official correspondence. Everyone uses their own mix: Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, 163 Mail, even QQ Mail. As for collaboration features like calendar, contacts, document sharing, forget about it.

This time they finally decided to do something, at least at the college level. Microsoft’s Bruce recommended Live@EDU, free for universities. Includes online Office, email, contacts, calendar, chat, cloud storage. He set up a free account for me to test. Pretty good. Basically has everything from enterprise Exchange Server. But it feels too similar to Hotmail — basically Microsoft’s Live services (Live Mail, Live Messenger, Office Live, SkyDrive) plus your own @sse.tongji.edu.cn domain. Speed isn’t great either.

I searched online and found Google App for Education. Similar stuff: email, online Office, chat all replaced by Google’s set. I don’t have a Google account, but Google App offers a free version. Registered one for hezongjian.com immediately. Tested it out. Works well. Speed and usability on par with Microsoft. Text ads are more tolerable. I’ve used Gmail for so long that the habit feels natural. The only problem: some services are blocked by the Great Firewall, like Google Docs and Google Sites. One day the entire Google App page might be inaccessible. Hard to use with confidence. Google, you’re such a tragedy.