Student wins iPad for birthday

Apple of my iPad: Thobo Mmopi receives his iPad from Eugene van Rooyen, the myUCT project manager and team leader of the ICTS Computing Platforms team.

Thobo Mmopi, a third-year engineering student, was the 5 000th student to activate his myUCT account - his reward: a sought-after Apple iPad 2.

Naturally, Mmopi was overjoyed, especially as he collected his prize on his birthday.

But, says Information and Communication Technology Services, more students can share in the joy as there are still two more chances for undergraduate and honours students to win. ICTS will be giving away prizes to the 10 000th and the 15 000th students who had activated their mailboxes before the end of November.

Students will need to move over to the new system before 31 December, as they will lose access to their GroupWise mailbox from that date onwards and thereafter will only have access to the new system.

myUCT offers much more space for email - 10GB as opposed to the meagre 50MB on the GroupWise student post offices. As a myUCT user, students also get 25GB of secure, online storage for documents, media files, etc, using the SkyDrive; instant messaging; a calendar to help organise their lives; free usage of Microsoft Office Web Apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint; and a central mailbox for any of their other mail accounts.

Mmopi is very happy with his myUCT account. One of the features he likes most, he says, is the ability to share information with friends and fellow students