[Macpartners] Eudora 5.2.1/6.1 targeted for retirement

[Deb Bowser]

Date: Thursday, October 20, 2005
To:  Members of the MIT Community: itpartners at mit.edu, macpartners at mit.edu,
winpartners at mit.edu, sw-release-announce at mit.edu, ed-tech at mit.edu,
From: Software Release Team <swrt at mit.edu>
Subj:  Eudora 5.2.1/6.1 targeted for retirement
Cc:  is&t at mit.edu, itag at mit.edu, it-lead at mit.edu

Good morning,

Information Services and Technology (IS&T), in consultation with our 
IT colleagues, will discontinue support for Eudora 5.2.1 (Windows) 
and Eudora 6.1 (Macintosh) on January 31, 2006.

Eudora 5.2.1 (Windows) was released to the community in August 2003. 
Since then, Qualcomm has released several major versions and MIT 
released Eudora 6.2.x in August. Eudora 5.2.1 has a security 
vulnerability and the vendor's recommendation is to upgrade. Qualcomm 
did not release a security patch for any Eudora versions. Similarly, 
Eudora 6.1 (Mac OS X), released in May 2004, is well behind the 
current Qualcomm and MIT-released version made available this past August.

IS&T's discontinuation of support for an application is in response 
to the community's request for improved responsiveness to new vendor 
releases and for reliable product releases. The retirement of Eudora 
5.2.1 (Windows) and Eudora 6.1 (Mac OS X) signifies the end of 
application testing within the operating environment, the end of 
updates to documentation, and the end of active attempts to resolve 
newly identified problems. IS&T will provide assistance in upgrading 
to a currently supported email application.

In response to the user community, IT colleagues, and the vendor 
market for email applications, IS&T is actively endorsing and 
supporting the migration from Eudora to other email applications, 
particularly those bundled with operating systems: Apple Mail for Mac 
OS X and Outlook Express for Windows. WebMail is also an option.

The Eudora user population has been decreasing as members of the 
community choose
another email application, graduate, retire, or leave the Institute. 
New members of the community, especially faculty and staff, are 
encouraged to use a recommended email application (Apple Mail, 
Outlook Express/Professional, or WebMail). Since the introduction of 
IMAP at MIT, these email applications have worked seamlessly within 
the MIT environment. Use of the IMAP protocol with these email 
applications provides a stable user experience for reading email.

To assist clients migrating from Eudora to these recommended email 
applications, IS&T plans to conduct workshops during IAP and beyond. 
IS&T will provide documentation on the migration process and tools 
where possible.

With IMAP you will have access to several useful features:
- WebMail lets you access your email from anywhere you have a web browser
- You can access email from multiple machines with ease and maintain the
message status (such as read or unread) between them.
- MIT SpamScreen is easier to use and check as it shows up as a folder
within your IMAP Inbox
- You can optimize your email client(s) to handle large volumes of email
over slow connections by downloading just the headers to select messages to
read. This is very useful for PDA email clients.

Please feel free to share with other colleagues within your 
Department, Lab or Center.

For the latest information regarding email, go to the Email at MIT 
page: 	<http://web.mit.edu/ist/topics/email/>

For the latest information regarding spam screening, go to the Spam 
Screening at MIT page:
	<http://web.mit.edu/ist/services/email/nospam/>

In closing, an announcement for upcoming migration workshops will be 
made once the schedule is finalized. You can send any questions, 
comments or concerns to the Software Release Team <swrt at mit.edu>.

Deb Bowser
Team Leader - Software Release Team
Client Support Services
Information Services and Technology (IS&T)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Room W92-176
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-253-3879
bowser at mit.edu