At the Hall of Science, we switched to the Google Enterprise Applications platform about 14 months ago.
Other than some hiccups when Google had an outage, the experience has been excellent. GMail is everything that the free version is, but without ads. You can make full use of the Labs add-ons which has allowed customizations that make switching away from a mail-reader/integrated organization system like Outlook much easier. Many of us set a reader like Mail.app to start up on a weekly basis, download our mail to a local file, and keep a nice, searchable backup if GMail goes down. The Calendaring system has been an excellent way for us to pull together a number of disparate systems into something that can be easily shared, the Sites functionality has eliminated the need for an "intranet," and little tools like chat and ability to SMS from within do change communication speeds (granted, not always for the better- but that's a human issue, not the tools). And syncing contacts is gloriously easy. Now, before I start sounding like a Google evangelist: I would call Google Docs a work in progress. While it does allow for faster collaboration and less headaches when Windows, Mac, and Linux people send out documents, it's not as full featured as MS Office (or OpenOffice), and on more than one occasion I have switched to OOo because the formatting in Docs was driving me a little nuts (it can feel a little like WYSIWYG editing with Dreamweaver of years past). Additionally, the death of Google Gears has meant no offline docs right now. So we wait until HTML 5 implementation gets into full-swing. The package does not include tools like Maps, Earth, or Wave. Having the ability to create customizable map points from within your own domain (without having to write it yourself) would be very helpful for everything from invitations to exhibits to educational programs. Alas. Like everything, you win some and you lose some. But the overall experience has been pretty good, and far easier for people to wrap their heads around when learning- and our IT staff has been much happier since the switch. Hope that helps. .Daniel Daniel M. Bartolini Exhibitions New York Hall of Science 4701 111th Street Corona, NY 11368 [ p ] 718 . 699 . 0005 x391 Sign up for NYSCI e-news! www.nysci.org/newsletters On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 12:10 PM, Tim Atherton <timatherton at telus.net>wrote: > The University of Alberta here recently switched/is switching their > whole email system to gmail. Not sure how it's going in practice, but > that's a pretty large switch (about 50,000 students and staff). > > > http://thegatewayonline.ca/articles/news/2010/01/25/google-s-gmail-selected-replace-email-service-across-campus > > > http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/University+Alberta+outsource+mail+Google/2433450/story.html > > tim > > > Tim Atherton > e. timatherton at telus.net > t. 780.292.3881 > archivist ? curator ? photographer > > > ?/The archives are comprehensive and totally secure, my young Jedi. > One thing you may be absolutely sure of - if an item does not appear > in our records, it does not exist!/? > Jocasta Nu - Jedi Archivist > _______________________________________________ > You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer > Network (http://www.mcn.edu) > > To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu > > To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l > > The MCN-L archives can be found at: > http://toronto.mediatrope.com/pipermail/mcn-l/ >
