By its own admission, Live@edu is compatible with "Windows, Mac and Linux machines" and with the IE, Firefox and Safari browsers.

At QUT, deputy vice chancellor for the division of technology, information and learning support, professor Tom Cochrane, said the university "carefully considered" various options and was pleased to offer students a "greatly improved" e-mail service through Microsoft.

"The Live@edu service offers our students the advantage of a greatly increased mailbox capacity and attachment file size, a useful calendar, plus a number of improvements in related services, while retaining their identity as QUT students in their e-mail addresses," Cochrane said.

"The University will benefit by having automated service upgrades, and better scalability and availability by deploying this software as a service offering from Microsoft."

During the current semester, QUT's 40,000 students will also have access to a suite of online applications.