<<Have any of these users tried version 3.0b? Are the results the same or different?>>
The 3.0 betas have not shown this problem. In fact that was why my original question was whether this had been corrected in 3.0B--unfortunately I cannot say this with **complete** certainty because of problems they have had with 3.0--one of them was simply that none of them could find their correct modem strings (remember these are students who "know it all" and therefore don't tell me this until they have tried all the other modem strings themselves) and were consequently disconnecting like mad--the second is that thewre are other problems--such as the problem in which replying to mail twice seems to cause a freeze.
So my answer is a tentative no--no the "gray out problem" in 2.5 does not appear to be there in 3.0
