Student Computing Cluster Improvements - Fall 2004

The Academic Computing Systems group has purchased 50 new computer systems for the Student Computing Clusters. These include:

An (almost) completely new MUB Student Computing Cluster
- 31 Dell Dimension 4600's with 3.0GHz Pentium 4 processors
- 10 Apple eMac's with 1.25 GHz PowerPC G4 processors
- 2 HP 4200 LaserJet printers
- (The HP 4500 Color LaserJet is still the same)
3 new Dell's and 3 new eMacs as CIS Walk-In Services in the MUB
3 new eMacs in the Spaulding G68 Cluster

The Dell systems are the first we have purchased with flat-panel displays! They all have 17" LCD monitors. We would have purchased flat-panel iMacs, but supply problems at Apple made this not available for purchase this summer. The Student Computing Clusters will be moving, over the next few years, to all flat-panel displays due to the smaller footprint, lower power consumption, and less heat production of these newer technologies compared with tradition CRT displays.

Some of the biggest changes in the Clusters have been on the software end. These are:

Office 2004 on the Mac OS X systems and Office 2003 on the Windows XP machines
Changes to the Windows XP setup to provide more reliable access to personal networked storage (the U: drive) including having the Windows "Desktop" space by a folder on the U: drive (U:\Desktop). This means you can save files to the "Desktop" and they will be saved to your own networked disk space and will follow your from computer to computer in the Clusters
Upgrades of the Mac OS X systems to version Pnather 10.3.5 along with iLife 4 applications. These upgrades include OS changes for increased reliability using networked home directories. We also have configured the machines to stop writing the large ~/Library/Caches folder to your network disk space to stop wasting this space and eliminate a lot of problems caused by users running into their disk quota limits.

All of these improvements have been funded via the Student Technology Fee.