Information pro's and con's with using google apps

[Tammie Grossman]

http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/alloftheabove.html#utm_cam...

Has anyone used this?

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated. As of now we don't allow free email or email for students.......

[Brian Norman]

Looks interesting and more feature rich than Gaggle.net (which is also free for student email) that we are using now. Someone should try it out and let us know.

Brian

[Ben Dahlin]

I'm really looking to move to Google apps once my exchange server reaches its end of life. It’s hard to beat free.

pros -
Free
It’s in the cloud
no maintenance of e-mail server / storage
you can still use outlook, or any other imap e-mail client
access the apps from anywhere

cons -
It’s in the cloud, when Google apps or your internet connection goes down, you have no control over it

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/09/gmail-down-again/

[Brian Norman]

And Google Apps has certainly had it's issues with going down. I'm not willing to give up my Exchange server, it's been 100% reliable and I have control over it. Not to mention that with the reduced price we pay it's a bargain. I'll use Gaggle (or something similiar) for student accounts because if they close down the service next week, no big loss. If all my staff email disappeared... I'd be looking for a new job.

Plus, Google isn't providing it "Free" out of the kindness of their hearts. They want you to be watching their ads 24x7, which is where they make billions... OK, that's enough ranting from me :)

[Ben Dahlin]

http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/communication.html

No advertising for google apps education. You must have the wrong google :-P

[Brian Norman]

That's cool.

[Dan Markert]

Tammy, Please clarify if you are talking about the actually cloud apps or just gmail. MHD schools has experience using the SHARED feature of Google apps with lab of 33 users working collaboratively on 3 or 4 documents becomes is very Internet bandwidth intensive. It made our connection to the cloud flat line.....

After this incident we do NOT openly promote.

[Tammie Grossman]

If you click on the link, is what i am talking about.... she wants them to use all features. Thanks

[Dan Markert]

MHD description if previous post is accurate. Bandwidth intensive with loads of users. Bandwidth needs grow exponentially when invoking the collaborative SHARED document feature

[Tammie Grossman]

Thanks for the info.
Tammie

[Jon H]

I was seriously considering utilizing Google Apps & gmail as our email solution for staff while I was at Pelican Rapids. I determined that it would be just too much of a demand on our already heavily used internet connection.

I was thinking that if pressed to add email for students I would add them to our exchange server (utilizing a different email domain, etc.) Student email boxes are only $1.28/mailbox.

Jon

[Brian Norman]

Jon,

How's it going? I didn't think you respond to us lowly K-12 people!!! :) Hope things are going well at the new job.

Brian

[Bob Henderson]

Bit late to the party on this one, but better than never.

I actually signed up for Google Apps education edition, and recently got approved by google as an educational institution to have access. So far, it seems like a fantastic tool for both students and staff to interact with. However, as others have said, its a bit bandwith intensive, and will continue to be more demanding with its expansion.

If you would like to see it in action, let me know, and I'll happily make you a demo account at my Google Apps domain, so you can poke around a live site.