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DoIT Support Contract For Eudora with Qualcomm

DoIT maintains a Eudora site license and Qualcomm support contract for all of UW-Madison. We have decided not to renew the site license and the support contract.

The site-license gives us the ability to freely distribute the installer so that it is ad-free and so that we can change some of the default settings. However, since the number of Eudora users is decreasing, the cost of the site license is no longer worth the investment.

The support contract gives us the ability to escalate issues to Qualcomm support when there are serious problems with the software. We have only had to escalate a couple of cases in the past few years to Qualcomm. In addition, the response we get from Qualcomm support is slow and usually not very helpful. We have decided that the support contract is not worth the investment.

On a more general note, we strive to make WiscMail compatible with as many email clients as possible. We offer best-effort support for any email client. We choose not to mandate a particular email client because it forces some to use a product that does not fit their needs. At the same time, we recognize that many users such as yourself believe that Eudora fits their needs best. All we are doing is lowering Eudora to the same level of support and investment as most other popular email clients (Netscape, Outlook, Mozilla, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, OS X Mail, Entourage, etc). You may choose to use whatever email client best fits your needs.

You may continue to use version 6.2 of Eudora forever, compliments of the UW. If you wish to upgrade to a newer version at a later time, you can either download the free version from Qualcomm (which is the same, but has advertisements), purchase a personal license from Qualcomm (which also comes with technical support), or have your department purchase a license.

You will be able to get support for Eudora. Configuration instructions are provided by the DoIT Help Desk. The Help Desk will help set up any email client to connect to WiscMail on a best effort basis. Eudora is fairly easy to configure, so this should not be a problem even if the support staff are not familiar with the product. The Help Desk will help with technical issues in a best-effort manner; however if you have larger problems with the software, then they will refer you to Qualcomm's technical support.

The Help Desk plans to drop official technical support for Eudora when calls dip below 300 a year; which is less than 1 call per day. We have a large population of Eudora users on campus, so it will be a long time before that threshold is reached.

If your technical demands for Eudora are high, then you should consider purchasing support from Qualcomm directly. They won't be able to help connect you to WiscMail--particularly if Eudora features do not keep pace with WiscMail development. But they will probably be more helpful than the Help Desk with Eudora advanced technical problems.