2021年考博英語閱讀理解模擬題（十五）

Maintaining internal E-mail systems has long been the bane of the university information-technology director. Servers are unwieldy and unreliable, and in the past several years, the number of student complaints has grown exponentially as forward-moving providers like YahooMail, Hotmail, and Gmail have increased expectations of what E-mail should offer. The solution for a number of colleges has been to wave the white flag and outsource E-mail hosting to the experts.

Microsoft, which owns Hotmail, and Google (Gmail) are the biggest players in the educational E-mail hosting market. Along with the neat-o peripheral gizmos like messaging, calendars, and collaboration tools, the outsourced systems are more stable, have better spam filters, and provide much more storage space than the typical university's in-house system. At the University of Pennsylvania, its old E-mail service gave students 60 megabytes of storage, just 3 percent of the 2 gigabytes Windows Live now provides. In return, Google and Microsoft get almost nothing, at least monetarily and in the short term. Microsoft's Windows Live @ edu and the Google Apps Education Edition are free of charge for schools. Eliminating another source of revenue, the two tech giants stripped their respective services of advertising in an effort to accommodate educators' concerns. Microsoft breaks even on the venture (it does run ads on non-E-mail services like instant messaging), while Google, which makes almost all its money through advertising, runs at a loss.

But what money they don't make at the moment will—the companies hope—pay great dividends in the form of lifelong users in the future, says Google's Jeff Kelter. As quickly as they shuffle out of commencement, graduates see their E-mail transition to the traditional ad-based formats of Gmail and Hotmail. And unlike before, when universities couldn't afford to host thousands of alumni, Google and Microsoft can maintain every account indefinitely, retaining customers as long as customers still want them.

Not all schools are ready to outsource their tech dirty work, with privacy and security topping the list of concerns. Critics worry that by handing over the responsibility of E-mail hosting, colleges also relinquish the freedom to keep the information safe in the best way they see fit. Even in the corporate world, there is great skepticism of consumer technologies like Google Apps. Yet most university IT managers agree that outsiders would do a better job protecting individual E-mail from viruses and spam than their own small operations, and strong word-of-mouth praise has done wonders to supplement the almost nonexistent marketing budgets for these Microsoft and Google projects.

The price tag—or lack of one—isn't a bad sales pitch either. Ramin Sedehi, the vice dean for finance and administration at Penn, says 30 percent of Penn's students already forward their messages to outside clients, and he predicts universities will eventually be out of the E-mail hosting business altogether. Ball State University and the Indiana University Alumni Association are now on Windows Live, and Arizona State University switched to Google Apps in October 2006, already converting at least 40,000 of its 65,000 students to the new system. Penn State University and California Polytechnic State University, to name two, have been in talks, while other schools are watching and waiting.

1. The number of student complaints has grown exponentially because_____

[A] the school servers are unwieldy and unreliable.

[B] the information-technology director is not the expert in providing IT-related assistance.

[C] the internal E-mail systems are much more backward than those commercially successful email systems.

[D] there are no collaboration tools in the internal E-mail systems.

2. Microsoft and Google do not run ads on the E-mail systems for schools because_____

[A] they want to cater to the requirements of their clients.

[B] they are sponsored by schools and do not need the revenue from ads.

[C] they want to build up a unique community with life-long loyalty.

[D] they want to maintain the stability of the systems at the present.

3. The two giants persist in providing the E-mail services though they run at a loss because_____

[A] they believe they will have good returns from the would-be lifelong users in the future.

[B] it is part of their social commitment to return the society through contributing to education.

[C] their strategy is to make profit through advertisement to university alumni.

[D] they want the students to propagandize for their projects.

4. Compared with the universities, the advantage of Goole and Microsoft in hosting accounts of alumni is _____

[A] that they can reserve every account with minimum charge.

[B] that they can retain every account at customers’ wish.

[C] that they can maintain every account as long as the customers want.

[D] that they can keep every account fro free in a long term.

5. The word “relinquish” (Line 3, Paragraph 4)most probably means_____

[A] lose.

[B] abandon.

[C] exchange.

[D]waste.

[答案]

1. C

2. A

3. A

4. C

5. B

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