SSCC News for March 2000

Inside this issue...

Printing Usage Accounting
Double-Sided Printing from Windows
SAS on UNIX Upgraded to Version 8
Update on SSCC E-mail Performance
Status of WordPerfect on UNIX
SSCC Spring Training Opportunities

Printing Usage Accounting

SSCC is now using special software to track printing usage for each SSCC user. This was a decision made at a recent meeting of the SSCC Steering Committee. Each user's printing usage will be reported to their sponsoring agency(s) monthly and will be included with other usage information used to allocate agency costs at end of each fiscal year.

Following is some summary information for the past two months: Approximately 150,000 sheets of paper were printed from SSCC's public printers in the Computer Room, I/O Room, and the two terminal rooms - that's almost 150 reams of paper a month. 40% of the printing was from Econ users, 36% from Sociology, 12% from IRP, 10% from CDE, and 1% from Rural Sociology and the Aging Institute.

Double-Sided Printing from Windows

We get a lot of complaints about PC users not printing double-sided to SSCC's public printers. It's no wonder why so much print out is single-sided though -- it is difficult to find the right options in most print dialog boxes. We have written two new handouts with step-by-step instructions for printing double-sided from Windows:

Double-sided Printing on Windows NT (SSCC Pub. #5-5)
Double-sided Printing on Windows 95/98 (SSCC Pub. #5-12)

Note that these documents may need to be updated if we continue to experience problems with the print drivers for the printers in the I/O room. For this reason, these documents are currently available only on-line.

SAS on UNIX Upgraded to Version 8

SAS has been upgraded to version 8 on all the UNIX computers licensed to run SAS (all UNIX computers except NORMAN). The command "sas8" will invoke version 8.

There are too many new features in Version 8 to list them all here. A few noteworthy features include:

o SAS data sets are now portable across operating systems (see related article below)
o Direct referencing of permanent SAS data sets is now possible. LIBNAME statements are no longer required.
o All SAS output is redirectable to SAS data sets and files (including HTML files)
o PROC GENMOD, SAS's procedure for fitting generalized linear models has additional options for GEE methodology
o Three new procedures are now available for selecting and analyzing survey sample data: SURVEYSELECT, SURVEYREG and SURVEYMEANS
o PROC MEANS can now compute medians
o Labels can now have up to 256 characters
o Variable and data set names can now be up to 32 characters long
o SAS Display Manager, SAS's graphical interface for interactive processing, has a whole new look and feel with a much improved text editor.

Visit SAS's web site for a complete list of features new to version 8.

Version 8 manuals are just beginning to be available from SAS. We probably won't receive any until May. SAS Institute is mostly promoting its on-line documentation so many manuals may never become available in printed form. The complete set of on-line documentation is available at DoIt's web site.

Update on SSCC E-mail Performance

Recall last September we experienced e-mail performance problems due to a high volume of e-mail and had to replace our mail server with a more powerful one. We just want to report that this new server has proven up to the its task. In the past couple of months, we have had a few near record high mail volume days and many days well above the mail volume the old server was having trouble processing and our new server doesn't even seem to notice!

Status of WordPerfect on UNIX

We continue to experience performance problems with WordPerfect on UNIX. Users are reporting printing problems and that the software will not run at all from newer model X-terminals and PCs running Xwin-32.

Unfortunately, there is little hope that any of these problems will be fixed because Corel no longer supports WordPerfect on Tru64 UNIX. Recall, that we had to install WordPerfect on an older nonY2K compliant reversion of Tru64 UNIX to get it to run at all.

Again we want to encourage people to find alternatives to WordPerfect on UNIX. If you have a PC, the SSCC Consultant has copies of WordPerfect on CD that you can borrow or ask us to install for you. If you don't have a PC and use an X-terminal, Microsoft Word is available on WinCenter. Word can read WordPerfect documents. Another alternative is to use WordPerfect from the Social Science Micro Lab.

SSCC Spring Training Opportunities

All SSCC training sessions require preregistration. If less than three people have preregistered for a course one week prior to its start date, the class may be canceled. Click here to register for a session(s). You will be reminded about your preregistration through e-mail a day or two before the class begins.

Date	Time	Topic	Room	Instructor
3/6	2:30-3:30	Windows Tips for Power Users	4452	Arnold
3/8	10:00-12:00	Creating a Web Page on SSCC's Web Server	2470	McDermott
3/9	2:30-3:30	Keep Your Research Current w/ the Internet	2470	Solock
3/28	1:00-3:00	Using the Web to Gather/Process Survey Data	2470	Brauer/Bongert
3/23	2:30-3:30	Using CDE's CD-ROM Extractor Machine	4471	Solock
3/24-4/7	12:00-1:00	Graphics with S-Plus (3 Friday sessions)	4452	White
4/5	11:00-12:00	Performing Calculations in Excel	3218	Brauer
4/6	2:30-3:30	Accessing SSCC's PC Network from Home	4452	Flory

Note: Any session scheduled in 2470 or 3218 (SSML) is a "hands-on" session.

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