According to usage statistics, the majority of our students have already moved from Windows 98 (Win98/CWin98) to the Windows XP (WinXP) environment. In order to concentrate our support effort on WinXP and leave room for the development of this environment, we will remove the Win98/CWin98 application environment in the CSC Student Terminal Area after the Summer Term.

A full list of software applications installed under Student LAN WinXP and Win98/CWin98 can be found at the following URL:

http://www.ncm2.xyz/csc/stafflan/software.htm

If there is any application that you use for teaching or workshops has not been installed under WinXP, please let us know through an on-line CSC Work Request and provide us with the original software media (CD or diskettes) for installation under WinXP. For applications that are not compatible with WinXP, you may have to acquire an XP version for installation. To be in line with the new teaching environment, please update your teaching materials accordingly for WinXP.

For further assistance, please contact our staff, Simpson Wong, at 3442 6455.

Phasing Out of Old Staff Email server and Old Webmail (Mailspinner)
By Henry Wong

As you may already know, the former OpenVMS Alpha Cluster staff email server (oldmail.cityu.edu.hk) has been replaced by the more powerful Sun ONE Messaging server for more than 8 months since last October.

In view of the fact that most, if not all, staff users have already switched all their email activities to the new mail server and thus no longer need to access the old mail server and the old Webmail (Mailspinner) interface, the Computing Services Centre (CSC) is going to phase out the latter two at the end of October 2003.

Such move has NO effect on POP3 users - the majority of staff users, because all email messages that were stored in their mailboxes on the old mail server have already been transferred to the local mailboxes on their computers either before or during the server replacement in last October. Thus POP3 users no longer need to access the old mail server since then.

For IMAP users, however, some of their old mail might still reside in their mailboxes located on the old mail server and has not yet been transferred to their local mailboxes. Since the old mail server will no longer be accessible after October this year, they are recommended to check their email on the old mail server using the old Webmail (Mailspinner) or their preferred email tools, and transfer all the essential messages to the local mailboxes on their computers as soon as possible.

Please refer to the Web page "Retrieving Email on the Old Mail Server After the Switch-over" (http://email.cityu.edu.hk/newserver/getoldmail.htm) for detail information and remember to use the OLD email account password when accessing email accounts on the old staff mail server.

Removal of Email Service on Academic UNIX Server
By Henry Wong

Owing to the fact that almost all users are currently using the Sun ONE Messaging server as the backend email server, the Computing Services Centre (CSC) had removed the email service provided on the Academic UNIX server (node Moscow) at the end of last Semester (end of June) as previously planned.

After the removal, users will no longer be able to receive email messages via the Academic UNIX server, and any email sent to the address username@uxmail.cityu.edu.hk will become unreachable. In addition, users will not be able to receive and send email with any email client software (e.g. Eudora, MS Outlook Express, etc.) via the UNIX mail server since the POP3 server uxpop.cityu.edu.hk and SMTP server uxsmtp.cityu.edu.hk will cease to exist.

However, users can still access their old email messages that are currently stored on their UNIX accounts with the help of UNIX host-based email tools such as mailx, elm or pine. These tools allow them to send email but not to receive.

It is strongly advised that CityU members should use the services provided by the Central Email Servers to handle their email activities. If you are one of the few who is still using your UNIX email account, you should start switching all your email activities to the central email servers as soon as possible in order to avoid any unnecessary interruption and inconvenience triggered by the removal of email service on the Academic UNIX server.

For detail information regarding this removal, please visit the following Web page:

http://email.cityu.edu.hk/faq/uxmail/.