Gadgetopia

I totally forgot that my first official e-mail account was vico9701@mn.state.marshall.edu or some randomly impossible to remember crap like that.

I do remember, however, that the only thing I ever used it for was to sign up for ebay, back in the day when a hotmail account wasn't official enough to serve as a primary email address.

UNL does. In fact, they just switched this year from hosting their own to using a hosted service. On one hand, they went with Microsoft. On the other, it's Exchange instead of Hotmail so we get Exchange/POP/IMAP. My department, as well as many others, run mail servers too. Looks much better for student correspondence, in my opinion.

I think universities that offer student email addresses should let the students pick what they are. I know for sure that if my email address were completely ridiculous, I sure as heck wouldn't use it. My university uses first initial + middle initial + first six letters of last name. If somebody with your same initials and last name already has an email address, then you get five letters of your last name and a digit. I've seen email addresses here with 5's in them. God help you if you have a "common" last name with more than six letters--the address would border on gibberish nonsense.

Luckily, my university email address is actually decent. It has my full last name.