Rumors of jamming e-mail accounts, slow connection rates and a boring-beige login screen haven’t exactly given Eastern’s new e-mail program a good reputation.

Joe Zoubek, a senior corporate communication major, said he has been hearing many bad things, but from what he’s seen, he likes the new e-mail setup.

He said the new beige, paw-print-stamped Web page reminds him of Microsoft Outlook.

Zoubek’s only complaint happened Monday night. Zoubek sent out around 25 e-mails for work-related business, and more than half of the people didn’t receive their mail, he said.

Because of the system change, all the old e-mail has to be moved to the new mail, said Greg DeYoung, associate director for campus infrastructure.

E-mails were moved over the weekend and are still being moved.

Users worried about lost mail should be patient. Movement of 30,000 accounts over the weekend takes time DeYoung said.

“It’s going to be showing up in the next day or two,” he said.

Eastern’s old e-mail system had been operating since the mid-to-late ’90s.

With improving technology, including additions to WebCT and Banner, campus computer programmers have been searching for nearly two years to update the system, DeYoung said.

A few changes were made over the years, including moves to Squirrelmail and WebOffice.

“They were never really successful,” DeYoung said.

The previous sites also weren’t as user-friendly, he said.

DeYoung said most of the negative feedback has dealt with user configurations and settings that weren’t transferred.

Most of the bugs have been worked out, but things always pop up and cause minor problems, he said.

The program has been installed for a few months, inactivated, to try and work out problems.

Still, Information Technology Services is pleased with how things have gone so far, DeYoung said.

“Anytime you make as big of a change as we did you always run into support issues,” he said.

ITS is working through those issues and changes, and knows it’s hard to please everybody, he said.

“But we try to,” DeYoung said.

With Panthermail, e-mail isn’t the only thing offered. Calendars, cell phone access, maps and games are also available.

Games, called zimlets, include Frogger, Pacman and Tetris.

But the e-mail server hasn’t been all fun and games.

“It was just hard to figure out,” said Kailey Carroll, a sophomore math major. She said it’s difficult to delete more than one thing at a time.

The program was confusing at first, said Laurel Livingston, a sophomore elementary education major.

But just like every other change in life, “I got used to it,” she said.

Some students said the new look is more professional.

Clint Schwartz, a sophomore elementary education major, was reminded of Microsoft Outlook.

He agreed with the professional look, and said he liked the calendar feature, too.

The change has made e-mail more stable, DeYoung said. Now the server can still survive through certain outages that don’t take down the whole campus.

The end user won’t notice as much, DeYoung said. Many of the new details are more for self-described computer geeks. “But the user will always have their e-mail,” he said.

He’s sure ITS will have to deal with a few smaller issues, but DeYoung said he’s excited about moving forward with access to computer systems.