In response to student complaints about the speed, or lack thereof, of Webmail 2, Information Technology Services will release Webmail Lite later this month.

Webmail 2 has caused several student complaints about the speed at which the program downloads, Robin Anderson, director of customer communications at ITS, said.

Anderson said the new Webmail alternative -- expected to be released April 15 -- will be faster, more reliable and provide better stability.

"The emphasis is on performance because that's what students were saying they wanted," Anderson said.

The Webmail Lite project began in November and has been in the beta testing stage since January, said Dan Coughlin, a member of the Academic Services and Emerging Technologies (ASET) technology team at ITS.

The slowness of Webmail 2 --which was released in August -- is caused by a combination of the amount of people trying to use it and the amount of information being downloaded, Coughlin said.

When logging on to webmail.psu.edu, students will have the choice of choosing whether to use Webmail 2 or Webmail Lite and can switch between the two versions without risking the loss of messages.

To help speed up the program, Webmail Lite will display only 20 messages in the inbox when the user signs in, as well as eliminate tabs, Claudia Caracci, a member of the ASET communications team, said.

Students will also see changes to their address book and attachments.

"We're trying to make it more attractive to students, faculty and staff," Anderson said.

Some students on campus said that they don't like Webmail 2 because it takes too long to load.

"It takes awhile for all of my mail to get filtered," Jonathan Hillenbrand (junior-journalism) said.

Allen Kummer (freshman-electrical engineering) said he doesn't like Webmail 2 because it is slow and is unreliable. "I would try [Webmail Lite] out," he said.