As we all look forward to the holiday season, the ITS staff would like to wish everyone a safe and happy Christmas.

The Help Desk will be closed from 11:30 AM to 2:00 PM on Friday, December 1 and over the official college holidays: December 25-29, 2006, and January 1, 2007.

We will return to normal operating hours on Tuesday, January 2. Our normal business hours through January 12, 2007 are Monday - Friday, 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM.

If there is a campus emergency affecting campus servers or IT services, please dial 704-894-2900 and select option 4.

If you have a non-emergency request or problem, please send the Help Desk email or leave voice mail (704-894-2900, select option 1 or 2). We will be in touch with you when the Help Desk reopens.

Help Desk Opens at 8:00 AM beginning January 15

To better serve you, the Help Desk will open at 8:00 AM the first week of classes and continue through the spring semester. Starting January 15, the Help Desk business hours will be Monday – Friday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM. This change is in response to requests for IT assistance that arise prior to the start of classes as well as early administrative schedules.


Instructional Technology Labs - General Information
General Information for the CIT, LRC and Media Lab

CIT, LRC and Media Lab
On December 19, we will rebuild all machines in the CIT, LRC and Media Lab in preparation for the spring semester. If you have any material on these machines that needs to be preserved, please contact us for assistance BEFORE December 18.

Language Resource Center (LRC)
Starting with the spring semester, the LRC will become the first dual-platform lab on campus. The lab will host 22 iMac computers (21 workstations and 1 instructor workstation), all of them running both Microsoft Windows XP and Apple OS X. Users can reboot the machine to switch operating systems. Instructions will be provided at every workstation, and instructional technology professional and student staff will be available for assistance. If you have any questions or would like to see a preview of the new machines, please contact Dr. Kyosung Koo (kykoo@davidson.edu).

If you have any questions about the labs, please contact your instructional technologist:

Paul Brantley (pabrantley@davidson.edu) - Sciences and Mathematics
Jason Brewer (jabrewer@davidson.edu) - Music
Kristen Eshleman (kreshleman@davidson.edu) - Humanities and Social Sciences
Dr. Kyosung Koo (kykoo@davidson.edu) - Languages and Classics

Last week Microsoft released the final version of the Windows Vista operating system and Office 2007 to their enterprise clients. The anticipated release date for the general public is January 30, 2007.

ITS is testing these new versions and planning the rollout to campus in the new year. We anticipate the migration will start in the spring for computers in faculty and staff offices. Most computer classrooms and labs will migrate to the new versions in the summer.

Information about Vista and Office 2007 are available on the Microsoft Web site.

During the winter break ITS will upgrade its software and equipment for SPAM protection and blocking. We anticipate that the result will be more accurate SPAM blocking (less SPAM reaching your mailbox as legitimate mail) and a more convenient interface for checking your personal quarantine.

Have you tried to login to Outlook Web Access (OWA) using just your username and password only to get an error message that your login has failed?

You can set up a conference call with your telephone for up to six parties with no degradation in quality. However, you may need to have a higher quality of line, allow a larger number to participate, or need participants to call into the conference. In the past, departments have received these types of conference capabilities from BellSouth and AT&T. Our PBX system has a conference bridge, so these same quality services can be provided from our campus.

Banner 7.3 upgrades have been applied. Release 7.3 is a minor release and includes enhancements and problem resolutions for the Advancement, General and Student Systems.

A recent survey of higher education institutions by the Campus Computing Project showed that generating reports from enterprise administrative systems, such as Banner, to be among the key challenges faced by many colleges and universities. Administrative systems are primarily intended and designed to manage vital campus resources and functions – admission and financial aid, academic affairs, student life, college relations, human resources, business and finance, and more. The critical nature of the day-to-day transactions, such as tracking grades or recording donor gifts, coupled with the complexity of the thousands of tables found in such integrated databases makes administrative systems ill-suited for reporting purposes.