While students were on winter break, MSU's e-mail system received a full makeover - inside and out.

The system, located at http://mail.msu.edu, replaced the 10-year-old Pilot system in March. In April, and again during the summer, the program had to be shut down briefly because of several glitches.

"We knew it was going to be an ongoing process," said Scott Thomas, division manager of MSU's computing services. "We still have and probably always will have a list of customer suggestions."

The Pilot system will be eliminated on March 23, according to the new system's Web site.

New site features include virus blocking, spam identification and mail-filtering systems. Workers spent about three months on the update.

Before the upgrade in December, there was no central virus scanning program on the mail, Thomas said.

"The virus scanning now is what everyone's used to," he said.

Thomas said users also will be able to better control spam in their in-boxes. The spam-controlling options tag junk mail by moving it to a separate folder for the user to delete.

"It's an option they can turn on if they want to," he said. "If you do nothing, it does nothing."

The program's servers increased from 15 to 35 to support the increasing demand from users and "just to make sure we're ahead of the curve of usage," Thomas said.

The final upgrade filters mail into a folder for the user and separates by sender. The new upgrade also can allow the user to leave automatic messages when on vacation.

General management senior Katie Greer said the mail filtering is the most useful of the new features.

"It's easy to manage with the new folders and a lot more organized," she said. "I like it a lot better."

The program also has some cosmetic updates, with newer, more colorful icons.

"The initial ones were bland and didn't make much sense," Thomas said.

Computer science and engineering sophomore Kevin Briere said he hasn't seen much of a change.

"I noticed a little difference: not as much junk mail," he said.

But biochemistry and biomolecular technology junior Kristy Braind said she's been "getting a lot less junk" since the e-mail system was updated.

"It's a lot cleaner and user-friendly," she said. "The university is so easy to spam."

For more information and for instructions on how to use each new feature, go to http://help.msu.edu/mail.

Staff writer Agnes Soriano contributed to this report.