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UW Exchange July 3, 2008 UW Exchange provides customers with an integrated email, calendar, task and contact management solution based on Microsoft Exchange 2007. Nebula is working with the Finance and Facilities organization to convert their offices to using UW Exchange. Detailed information about the service is available at: http://www.washington.edu/computing/uwexchange Office 2007 deployment June 4, 2008 Office 2007 is ready for deployment to all Nebula Gold desktops. We are now discussing with the managers of various Nebula client departments how to deploy Office 2007 and what training options will be most appropriate. Our plan is to have it installed on Nebula Gold workstations by the end of the summer. If you have questions, you can contact your department manager or email nebula@u.washington.edu. New look for Nebula site. May 27, 2008 This site now has a new look consistent with Computing and Networking and other sites. Laptops in Nebula March 18, 2008 Nebula is working to improve our laptop computer services. Because these mobile computers are used in a variety of ways and situations, we'd like to hear from you about your use of a laptop computer in Nebula, now or in the past. We've created a laptop service survey at: Nebula Laptop User Survey Feel free to forward this link on to others. Your responses will be most useful if received by March 31. Thank you. Nebula Training Room has moved to Vista March 18, 2008 The 12 systems in the Nebula Training room in the Academic Computing Center have been replaced with new Dell GX755 systems running Microsoft Vista and Outlook 2007. You can use these computers to test out the new features of Vista and Office 2007. You can schedule time in the room for some uninterrupted study, or you can connect to a system via Remote Desktop. Please contact us at nebula@u to schedule any of these options. Using Music Playing Software in Nebula Nebula clients are able to install software on their computers, and save work-related files to the file servers. Software that plays music CD's through a computer's speakers has become very popular. However, this software typically tries to save the music files to the My Music folder. In Nebula, the My Music folder is redirected to H:\My Music on the file servers. This has resulted in many gigabytes of non-work related music files being saved inadvertently to the file servers. Consequently, Nebula restricted access to the My Music folder and, each night, any content in the H:\My Music folder is deleted. Any music player you install should be configured to rip, or save, music to a location on your C: drive. Files saved to the H:\My Music folder will be deleted. A special exception was made for iTunes, which will not install correctly unless it has write-access to the My Music folder. Nebula allows iTunes temporary access to the H:\My Music folder, and then restricts it again. If you choose to install iTunes, do not load any music until iTunes has been configured to save to your C: drive. Instructions for configuring two popular music players are given below. Unless you are required to save music files for work, Nebula cannot provide any support for these products beyond these instructions, and compliance with any legal requirements the client's responsibility.
Nebula has deployed BOINC software to further UW research goals To further the research goals of the University, Nebula deployed the BOINC software to all Nebula computers this week. On some computers, BOINC changed the default screensaver to a BOINC screensaver. To change it back, right-click in a blank area of your screen. Left-click on Properties, then click on the Screensaver tab, and choose your favorite. BOINC allows the UW Rosetta research team access to idle central processing unit (CPU) time on Nebula computers. The UW administration believes this is a great way to support research done at the UW, as well as a new and effective way to leverage the power of Nebula workstations. There is more information on our Using BOINC page. If you prefer to exempt your computer from the BOINC software, just send an email to nebula@u. Inkjet printers: are they lying to you? June 22, 2007 A recent study says that, on average, more than half the ink from inkjet cartridges is wasted when users toss them in the garbage. The study looked at the efficiency of both single and multi-ink cartridges, and the result shows that many printers routinely report that they are low on ink even when they are not. Folks commenting on the study noted that Hewlett-Packard printers give both a "toner low" and "toner out" message, and changing the cartridge at the "toner low" message could waste thousands of pages of life remaining in the cartridge. Microsoft Office 2007 Compatibility Pack released June 5, 2007 Microsoft Office 2007 was released last year by Microsoft. The file formats of Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Access are different in this new version. The MS Office 2007 compability pack was released to all Nebula Gold computers on June 6. It allows users of Office 2003 to open, edit and re-save documents created in the Office 2007 versions. Nebula is currently testing Office 2007 and developing our deployment strategy. A number of you have volunteered to be early testers and we'll be contacting you soon. It's not too late to volunteer! Let us know if you'd like to be an early adopter, or if you have any questions. Please notify Nebula of staffing changes Please be sure to notify your Nebula Support person of any staffing changes, such as folks leaving the department, whether permanently or via extended leaves of any kind. This can help us more accurately manage user accounts and email lists. Thank you! |
