In my experience, the four most common e-mail programs used  in the UVa English department are these Mulberry, Eudora , Pine, and WebMail . Below, I discuss various aspects of these programs and provide links to their help documentation on the ITC web site. Note that the e-mail programs Simeon, Outlook, and Outlook Express are either not recommended or not supported at UVa.

The recommended e-mail program for University of Virginia users is now Mulberry, but I've never once met anyone who didn't loathe this program with a passion. Somehow the interface is just terrible. I refuse, therefore, to speak of it.

Discriminating e-mailers choose instead to use Eudora, which is now available in version 5.1. If you have an older version, you should upgrade. This version, unlike older versions of Eudora, allows users to have an IMAP configuration rather than a POP configuration. This means that your e-mail remains on the server rather than being downloaded to your hard drive. There are two advantages to an IMAP configuration (which is what ITC recommends):

1) It's less dangerous when you're sent a virus, because the server has trained professionals guarding and cleaning it; and

2) It allows you to read old e-mails from any computer with an Internet connection, using any e-mail program.

There is a single advantage to a POP configuration, though, in which all your messages are downloaded directly to your hard drive. If you have an expensive, slow, or otherwise difficult Internet connection (or if you travel frequently to Europe), you might want to work with all your e-mail offline, then connect for only so long as it takes you to send the messages you've written offline and download any new ones. See this link for more information on IMAP and POP.

• One important Eudora tip: Go to Help --> Payment and Registration and click on the button that says "Light Mode" to get rid of the annoying advertisements.

I myself read my mail on the server use Pine, which in some ways is antediluvian, being only text-based. It can't show all the pretty fonts and pictures, it can't open attachments automatically, and it can't hyperlink to web pages. It's a UNIX program, accessed using Telnet or SecureCRT. It has a certain aura of geek chic, though, and I'm used to it.

WebMail shouldn't be anyone's primary e-mail program, but it's very very useful when you're out of the state or out of the country. It allows you can use any browser (usually Internet Explorer or Netscape) to read your e-mail. Just go to http://www.mail.virginia.edu and log in.

Your mail must reside on the Central Mail Service (CMS) in order for you to use WebMail. If you have been at the University for longer than about five years, it's possible that your mail is not on the Central Mail Service. To see whether it is, go to http://www.virginia.edu and type in your own name in the "Keyword or Name" search box in a "People" search. Click on your name when it appears in the list of results, and see what your official e-mail addresses are. If one of them resembles "alf7e@unix.mail.virginia.edu," then your mail is not on the CMS. See the page "Migrating from UNIX to the CMS" for instructions on how to put your mail on the CMS, and contact me and/or the Help Desk at 924-3731 for help.

Note that if you use Eudora, you'll also need to use that IMAP configuration I discuss above.