The rolling programme of upgrades to the centrally-managed PC laboratories will continue during summer 2011

Information Services manage 35 computer laboratories across both campuses, and all of the public access computers in the library areas. We have a 4-year rolling programme of upgrades and refurbishments, to ensure that all of our front-line services are powerful enough to support our teaching and research needs.

The areas due for upgrade over summer 2011 are:

• Livingstone Tower: Rooms 301a, 301b, 411 and 901 (48/50/10/40 PCs respectively)
• McCance: Rooms 321 and 407 (30/20)
• Graham Hills: Room 634 (100)    
• John Anderson: Room 606a/b (12/12)

All of these areas will have some refurbishment, and the PCs will be replaced with new units.
The two small rooms in the John Anderson building (6.06a/b) will close, and the service will be relocated to room 510, adjacent to the revolving door.

The Sunray terminals in level 8 of the Colville building will be decommissioned.

Closure and refurbishment of these areas will begin immediately from 6th June with the rooms re-opening in September.

Where practical, we will phase the work to maintain some central computing presence in the area during this process. Similar facilities will also be available throughout the summer in the adjacent Colville, Architecture, Royal College and James Weir buildings.

The 4-year-old  PCs which are removed from the above labs will be redeployed in various other locations, including the old Sunray labs in Colville, on the reader floors of the Library, and in the Java Cafe.

At the start of July 2011, half of the public PCs in level 3 of the Andersonian Library will be upgraded to Windows 7 and Office 2010. A similar environment will be deployed in the upgraded computer laboratories in September 2011 – lecturers are encouraged to try these library machines during July, to ensure that all course notes are consistent with the new environment.

All staff who are booking any central IT rooms should note that the “base image” on all of these machines will include Windows, Office, some site-licensed applications, and some utility programs.  If you require any specific software, then this should have been communicated to us at the same time you booked the room – even if you have previously used that software in that room. If you require any additional packages to be installed, or existing packages to be upgraded, or licenses to be renewed, or any other changes to the installed configuration, you must ensure that the requirement (and if appropriate the media and licenses) have been passed to Gordon Watson at Information Services no later than 15 August 2011. If you do not meet this deadline, we will of course try to accommodate you, but cannot guarantee that the software will be in place for the start of term.