NEWS

Welcome New Members!

Hopefully, we've gotten to welcome each of you in person either at our orientation sessions last week or at the SSCC Help Desk office. If we haven't though, please drop by Social Sciences 4226 to pick up a packet of information and to sign up for a short computer orientation session. (School of Education members should visit with their department's Technology Support Contact.) During orientation, SSCC staff will talk to you about your computing needs and try to identify which of the many SSCC services and computing resources will be most useful to you. This makes it time well spent even for the most experienced computer users.

Server Upgrades and 64-bit Operating Systems

It's been a busy summer for computer upgrades. Winstat has been upgraded to use 64-bit Windows, and we have a new Linux computing cluster (Linstat) and new Lab PCs, both of which also use 64-bit operating systems. Since 64-bit operating systems no longer limit the amount of memory a single user can claim, we've created a new policy on memory usage. Finally, Stata/MP has been upgraded to use four CPUs at a time.

For all the details, see the SSCC News special issue on 64-bit Computing.

Help Desk Office Experiencing Delays

Due to the large volume of requests we are currently receiving in our Help Desk office, expect a longer than usual delay in hearing back from the SSCC staff person assigned your problem. This is especially true for PC support requests which may take several days. We are usually able to tend to other requests within one business day. If you wish to inquire about the status of your request, contact Nancy McDermott, Director of SSCC.

SSCC's Fall Training Schedule

SSCC's Fall training schedule is now available on SSCC's training web pages. We have classes in Stata, SAS, R, NVivo, Matlab, WordPress, MS Office, and Linux. Remember that all SSCC training sessions require preregistration.

New Features in Upgraded Webmail

SSCC's new Webmail program was an instant hit. You are really missing out if you still use Squirrel. Webmail features a user interface that acts more like an email program running on your computer than a web page.

The newest version which we installed last week has several new features:

  • Contact Groups (if you regularly send to a group of people),
  • Message list thread view (great for mailing lists),
  • Message list can now be up to 200 before you need to go to the next page of messages,
  • Inbox will automatically refresh with new messages (you no longer need to click 'inbox' folder to view new messages),
  • Improved autocomplete (it will now search by last name as well as first or email address).

For more details see the Webmail knowledgebase article including how to use the new contact groups and message threading features.

New Option for Printing Personal Documents

This summer we transitioned to the campus-wide print system called GoPrint for our instructional and lab users. The GoPrint system uses your UW NetID to debit your WisCard account for printing and costs $.07 a page. As SSCC members, your printing is paid for by your sponsoring department or agency. This is intended for printing related to University business. If you would like to use the GoPrint queues to print personal documents, please contact our help desk and we will be happy to add the queues to your account. For more details, read our knowledgebase article.