Microsoft Live@Edu

Since the time I've become an MSP(Microsoft Student Partner) there's a lot of fuss about what Live@Edu is and how is it better and more feasible then Google Apps. So here's the content straight from a horse's mouth.....

Regarding Live@Edu and convincing features of Live@Edu over GMail/Google Apps:
1] Live@Edu is a collaboration platform which also helps students and teachers interact dynamically, share notes, spectate presentations/lectures etc.
For this purpose Windows Live Meeting 2007 can be used. The students need to have only Windows Live Meeting 2007 client (which is free) and teachers for broadcasting the presentations will need Windows Communications Server 2007 (which actually costs a bomb if you have steep pockets).

2] Secondly, the unique selling point of Live@Edu is students are given mail addresses @ their own college domain. For Example, if a Harvard's student's name is "abc" then he can get abc@harvard.com. Now that's fantastic!!!
Imagine lacs of bucks saved by the college management in case they plan to give every student a mail ID w.r.t. their college domain.

3] Data warehouse geeks like me should look out for this feature coz it's the most sought after!!
5 GB of storage space for every ID registered over Windows SKY Drive with mailing facilities over HOTMAIL.
Now I can say I don't have to worry about as to where I can save my movies and other stuff coz I have a big repository.

3] Besides if college have labs which don't have Internet connectivity then too all is not lost. Students can still communicate with their local contacts over Windows Live Messenger. Just add the contacts as LAN contacts in the messenger, though I'm yet to try it personally.

4] Besides there's SMS to all facility which unfortunately doesn't work in India currently. I hope they (Microsoft Live team) address the problem at the earliest since I'm sure all are waiting for it eagerly.

5] If you look closely at the second feature which I've mentioned above, students can actually benefit from it once they finish their college because it'll help them build life-long relationship with their college and friends.

6] And the best of them the deployment of Live@Edu is free for MSP's like us whereas in other case it would have cost us atleast 50,000/- INR.

7] For more features and videos on Live@Edu goto:

http://get.liveatedu.com