It's amazing how fast e-mails pile up, especially for an active student juggling numerous extracurriculars, a social life and a slew of classes. And for those utilizing a WiscMail e-mail account provided by the University of Wisconsin, it's amazing how much important data needs to be deleted on a regular basis to stay under the paltry 100-megabyte allowance. In an environment becoming increasingly dependent on Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, image files and video clips, however, what's really amazing is how insufficient the Division of Information Technology's e-mail system is compared to private offerings. According to DoIT's 2005-06 annual report, WiscMail serves more than 72,000 e-mail accounts — about 50,000 for students and 22,000 for staff — and fills about 4 terabytes (4,000 gigabytes) of storage space as of April 2006. To put that in perspective, The Badger Herald's fileserver has a capacity of about 2 terabytes — and that's supporting just one student organization's loot, not the e-mail messages of an entire Big Ten campus. Additionally, WiscMail is supported internally by DoIT personnel. Not only is the software itself updated by DoIT programmers, but the servers storing the data are also hosted and maintained by the department — no doubt a large staff commitment for a system transmitting millions of messages every day. It's obviously time for an upgrade, and we have a suggestion: Let Google take care of it. Arizona State University announced a partnership with Google last semester that allows Gmail, the search engine giant's fabulous e-mail service, to host the school's 65,000 student accounts. Students keep the @asu.edu address but lose the nasty capacity limit — Gmail accounts have a cap of almost 3 gigabytes, and the limit increases literally by the second. Additionally, students can take advantage of the advanced search and organizational features built into Gmail. The interface boasts impressive interactive features, utilizing advanced scripting technologies and an advanced AJAX-centric architecture to deliver a user experience far superior to that of WiscMail. In Gmail, pop-ups and heavy markup are a thing of the past. But the best part of the agreement is, very clearly, it's free for ASU. ASU officials said in an initial press release that Gmail has freed up ASU staffers and allowed them to refocus on "accelerat[ing] the research and learning enterprise." Though we're not sure what that means, we're fairly certain DoIT could use some extra time to fix the Associated Students of Madison's online voting system or improve usability of the enrollment monstrosity. Though some might raise privacy as a concern in entrusting a third party to handle UW e-mail, Google has a strong reputation for security and respecting users' information. The company has opposed government inquiries into its massive collections of Internet records in the past, and keeping users' data private is a huge priority for any company in the public eye. Any way you slice it, the idea seems to have merit. DoIT's current offering comes up short, and if a solution — a free one, at that — could take care of the problem altogether, it's worth pursuing.