News

All the PCs in the lecture theatres and classrooms have been upgraded from Windows 98 to Windows XP. Among the advantages of Windows XP over Windows 98, better system stability and security are the most important.In the new Windows XP environment, users can select one of the two options below when the PC is boot up successfully:Staff LAN option (default option) This option allows users to connect to the Staff LAN. Users must logon using the account names and passwords as those being used to logon to the network from their desktop PCs. The whole process takes about 3 to 5 minutes.

Microsoft will soon cease its support on Windows 98 (Win98) and a lot of hardware and software, especially the new ones, will be better supported under Windows XP (WinXP). More importantly, the Banner 5, which is scheduled to go live in September 2002, will not run under Win98. As a result, the University is inevitably prompted to phase out Win98 shortly and to cease the support for Windows 2000 (Win2K) within the next few months.

Starting from 1 July 2002, the support services for both IP phones and conventional PABX phones have been transferred to the Computing Services Centre (CSC). As a result, the following arrangements have been made. Requests for Telephone Support Services To request for CSC's phone services such as cancellation, addition and relocation of telephone lines, you are required to raise a request through the "On-line CSC Work Request Submission System" under the "e-Communication" menu of the Intranet. Requests in paper form normally will not be accepted. To make enquiries or to report problems, please call the CSC Help Desk at ext 7658.

Accessing information the customized way will be a feature of the new Campus Pipeline—CityU e-Portal. When staff, students and alumni log on to the pipeline, we’ll get a personal greeting, and all the information we need will have been categorized for easy navigation—a real time saver. This personalized interface will soon take over from the University intranet as the web front page.

The Computing Services Centre (CSC) is going to replace the very old Staff E-mail servers on the Compaq OpenVMS platform with the newer and faster Sun Solaris machines using the Sun ONE Messaging server. The existing mail server has been used for over ten years. The replacement will definitely boost up user performance with faster response. Moreover, additional functionality and e-mail disk quota will be provided. Along with this, a new Web interface will be offered as an alternative to the Eudora tool for accessing the messages on the server.

As a step towards a paperless campus, the Computing Services Centre (CSC) has successfully developed an on-line system for the submission of CSC Work Requests. Starting from 15 May 2002, all CSC Work Requests have to be submitted on-line. The new Web-based system is easy to use and accessible from the Intranet using the Departmental Account. In addition, each department can nominate up to four staff members to log in and manage the on-line submission system.

The Computing Services Centre is pleased to inform you that the CityU Video-on-Demand (VoD) service is now available for you at home, and you may use the CityLink Plus dial-up facility or any broadband service to connect to it.To watch the rich VoD collection at home, you may first visit the CityU home page (http://www.cityu.edu.hk), select Intranet, and from there choose Staff. After logging in with your username and password, you will enter the staff Intranet. Then select the e-Learning tab on the top right-hand corner and from the menu, opt for CityVoD and you will reach the VoD page.

The Computing Services Centre (CSC) so far has received over 456 server registrations from 50 departments. The largest groups of servers are from MEEM, IS, and DCO having 111, 63 and 34 servers respectively. Apparently many of these servers in the academic departments are accessed by staff and students for projects or learning purposes while the rest are accessed by external parties for information with some or no access control. Almost all kinds of network protocols are utilised and every conceivable service is provided including some critical yet high risk ones such as: SMTP, FTP, DHCP, DNS, IIS, etc.

WebMail is a convenient tool for users to send and receive e-mail from any workstation that is connected to the Internet. Using any standard Web browser and the same e-mail account, staff and student can access their e-mails that are kept in the central e-mail server from any place within or outside campus. Since 1999, the Computing Services Centre (CSC) has provided a WebMail service using the Mailspinner software. Since the vendor of Mailspinner was acquired, support quality has dropped significantly. Unresolved technical problems such as language support remain unresolved. For continuous improvement of service quality, the CSC is regularly reviewing this service and searching for better solutions. After a period of vigorous software evaluation, in-house tailoring and pilot run, we are pleased to announce that a brand new WebMail system powered by Infinite InterChange 3.62 was launched for students and alumni in May 2002.

If there is a word to describe the Student Terminal Area (STA) of the Computing Services Centre (CSC), `bustle' is probably the right one: you always find lots of students in the STA, whether using the computers, printing their course work, scanning images, plotting graphs, attending lectures/workshops or just discussing with fellow classmates via electronic means. A survey conducted some time ago showed that the STA, except during term breaks, was on the whole 70% full while the demand simply outnumbered the supply during the pre-exam period. The latter was best demonstrated by the terminal booking status during that period.