Choose an E-mail Program

At Bates College, your e-mail is received and stored on a server named Mail. Your Mail account will receive college-wide announcements, and is the ONLY account that you can use to send e-mail to course related lists. Only your Mail account and the following methods for accessing that account are supported at Bates College.

We strongly recommend against the use of Microsoft Outlook because it is a target for viruses

CHOOSING AN EMAIL BROWSER:	THUNDERBIRD most features	WEBMAIL most accessible	MUTT fastest for text only
Best for use from:	your personal computer	lab computers, a friend's or at an internet cafe	quick checks but text only
Connection to server:	IMAP	IMAP	DIRECT
Access speed:	FASTER	FAST	FASTEST
Graphical interface:	YES	YES	NO
Handles attachments easily:	YES	YES	NO
Access from ANY web browser:	NO	YES	NO
Alters INBOX:	IMAP - YES	YES	YES
E-mail access from multiple locations:	IMAP ONLY	YES	YES
E-mail deletion is permanent:	IMAP - YES	YES	YES
Requires specific software:	Thunderbird	ANY WEB BROWSER	Secure Shell (SSH) (sftp for attachments)
Downloads mail to local computer:	IMAP - NO unless mail is moved to a Local folder	NO	NO

MUTT: best for viewing text based email in Campus Labs.
MUTT is a text based, menu-driven email application that runs in UNIX on the Bates College email server.  Secure Shell (SSH) is the application you use to directly access the e-mail server, and communicate with it in UNIX commands. Because you are directly accessing the email server, all of your mail remains in a central location, rather than being downloaded to the local hard drive of the machine from which you are accessing your email. Attachments and graphic files cannot be displayed using MUTT. However it is possible to save those files out of your email, and then SFTP them from Abacus, or once they are saved, access them directly using Paris. The benefit of using MUTT is that you are constantly checking your email directly at the source, so you receive messages from ILS and are less like to exceed your storage quota. Your mail is never downloaded to a client machine, where it might be accessed by the next person to use that machine. MUTT, and the folders you create in MUTT to sort your email are also accessible if you use Thunderbird with IMAP.

WEBMAIL: best for viewing attachments and graphics in Campus Labs.
Webmail is a web-based email reader that can be accessed from any networked machine with a web browser. It never downloads your email to the local hard drive of the machine from which you access it. It has a graphical interface, rather than text-based, and therefore many people are more comfortable using it. Because it is web-based, however, it tends to take longer to access your email, and it can only show you a certain number of messages at any given time. Webmail does a better job handling attachments and graphics than MUTT, but it is not as automatic as THUNDERBIRD. http://webmail.bates.edu

THUNDERBIRD: most features, but security issues exist in Campus Labs
Thunderbird is an email browser, that when fully configured, can access your email on Abacus. Thunderbird should be configured to use IMAP for use at Bates College. If Thunderbird is configured with Mail as a POP server, it will create a copy of your messages on the local hard drive, where they might be accessed by the next person to use the machine. Thunderbird has the most robust features for viewing attachments and graphic files. Thunderbird is best for use on your own computer, where you can control access to the machine to maintain security. It can be set using POP to copy email from the server, and then erase the original messages on the server to remove the possibility of exceeding your storage quota; however we advocate using the IMAP server settings, where all of your messages reside on the server, can be accessed from anywhere (using Webmail), and are backed up routinely.