The University has selected the Lenovo ThinkPad T61 laptop as the standard laptop for Mobile Computing 2008. For the Tablet PC users, the University has selected the ThinkPad X61.
Sophomores who have preregistered for the fall semester can pick up their new laptop or tablet PC before they leave for the summer.
Read all about the specifications of the laptop and tablet PC after the jump
The University recently upgraded the campus Lotus Notes-based email system. Since this upgrade, the campus email system has experienced frequent "crashes". Lotus Development Corp. has determined that these problems are due to a bug in the current software release. They expect to have a fix for this by the end of this month. Meanwhile, University IT Services is monitoring the campus email system closely, and will restart the servers as soon as they see any problems with the systems.
Over the Presidents' Day weekend the University successfully upgraded to Banner 7.5.1, the latest version of Banner. This version supports a number of additional Banner systems planned for the next few months, including the Banner Luminis portal, the Banner Xtender document imaging and management system, Oracle Identity Management suite, and the PeopleAdmin connector to Banner.
Complete details regarding the University's Banner Project can be found at: http://www.shu.edu/project-banner/
On Wednesday, February 13, members of the IT management team met with the University's Academic Council (deans and members of the provost's management team) to discuss the status of the Banner Project and the technology infrastructure upgrades planned in the coming months. These planned technology upgrades include, among other things, replacing the University's Lotus Notes email system with Microsoft Exchange.
The MS PowerPoint presentation outlining the status of the Banner Project and the technology infrastructure upgrades planned for the near future can be found here.
DRM travails are driving users crazy!
As the University plans to move to Microsoft Vista this summer, I've noticed the supposed stronger Digital Rights Management (DRM) of Vista may have some interesting unintended consequences. I use several subscription services for digital content, including Ruckus for music and Amazon Unbox for video. It seems that users of Vista sometimes find that content from these legal pay services conflict with one another. Microsoft's suggested solution is to delete all the licenses for the DRM protected content from your computer and renew the licenses. (See, for example, the article "Clearing DRM Store on Vista" in the Ruckus FAQ.)
But this is not as simple as it sounds. Many subscription services and pay sites won't simply renew the license for content I've paid for in the past. There are, of course, many programs out there that will strip the DRM from my content, but that would technically be illegal. The MPAA and RIAA should look at me as an ideal customer. I want legal content, and I pay for it from multiple sources. Is it so hard for the MPAA, RIAA, Microsoft, Ruckus, Amazon, and other subscription services to get together figure out how to make all my legally obtained (and paid for) content work? Has anyone else felt like the MPAA and RIAA's campaigns to ratchet up the use and enforcement of DRM may have the unintended consequence of driving users like me to strip the DRM from my legal content in order to make it work?
Steve Landry, CIO, Seton Hall University
New Campus Portal and Email systems are coming! University IT Services is finalizing plans to pilot a new campus portal and email system.
Seton Hall University's IT services have been largely based on two systems: the Blackboard portal system to consolidate services and information for IT users at SHU, and the Lotus Notes email system. While these systems were state-of-the-art when implemented a decade ago, over the past few years these technologies have been overtaken by competitors. The University's new Banner administrative system provides the University greater opportunities to seamlessly incorporate institutional data and processes with our portal, messaging, and calendaring systems. To support the integration of the University's administrative system, portal, and email systems the University is piloting the implementation of the Banner portal system, called Banner Luminis, and the Microsoft Exchange email and calendar system. This pilot will give the University valuable feedback in how to support these new systems. If these pilot projects are successful, it is expected that the Banner Luminis portal and Microsoft Exchange email will be rolled out to the University community in August.
