IET refreshes its campus computer rooms

Know anyone who could use a 4-year-old Macbook or Dell 790? Aggie Surplus should have a fresh supply this summer, now that Information and Educational Technology has begun the annual summer upgrade of its computer classrooms and labs.

Faculty, students and staff use the locations for academic work and instruction. The 14 rooms and six labs get a lot of traffic--they recorded 268,000 logins and 5,700 class hours during last winter quarter alone.

IET's Computer Lab Management (CLM) unit replaces computers when they turn four years old. This time they'll replace 225 old computers with new models including Dell Optiplex 9020, Apple Mac Mini, and Apple iMacs. The new machines will be installed in 78 Hutchison, 102 Wellman, 2101 Student Community Center (SCC) (Macs only), 2102 SCC, 2103 SCC, 241 Olson, and 247 Olson.

Throughout the rooms, IET is also:

• Upgrading Apples to the new OS X 10.10 Yosemite operating system software.
• Switching from 32-bit Windows 7 to 64-bit Windows 7--the upgrade improves performance, especially when the person using the computer operates several programs at the same time.
• Doing the normal summer upgrade work of installing new software versions and patching almost every application, said CLM manager Tim Leamy.

Computer Lab Management schedules the work in summer, when the campus has fewer classes. That doesn't mean the locations are inactive, though.

"Every room we're updating is open over the summer, except for two, so we work around the summer session schedules and classes," Leamy said. "People think summer is our quietest time, but actually it's the busiest."