Today's college students rely on e-mail more than ever: to share notes with one another, to communicate with their professors, to stay in touch with friends and family while they're away at school. Students need a way to be able to store and maintain increasing amounts of e-mail, and richer, easier methods by which to manage related tasks, such as calendars, contacts and file sharing.

The University of Pennsylvania -- known familiarly as Penn -- heard those needs, and has responded by partnering with Microsoft to enhance the communications platform the school offers to its students. With "Penn Live," students of Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences and the Wharton School -- which combined represent 13,000 of the university’s 20,000 students -- will have the option to use a customized version of Windows Live to access a full suite of communications services, including e-mail, starting this fall.

"Penn Live" will provide Penn students with 2 gigabytes of e-mail storage space and includes support for both mobile and offline capability, as well as other features such as blogging, contacts management and photo sharing. It was developed through Microsoft's Windows Live @ edu program, which provides institutions of higher education with a set of hosted communications services for students, alumni and applicants at no charge.