CSC Student Terminal Area - A New Look

by Joe Lee

The CSC Student Terminal Area has undergone significant changes this summer to enhance its teaching and learning environments. Various aspects, including furniture, hardware, operating system and software, have been upgraded. Staff and students will surely enjoy working in this improved environment.

Furniture

Do you still remember the heavy and dark gray computer carrels in the CSC Student Terminal Area? They were gone forever! This furniture has been used for over 10 years and was rather worn-out. Also, the outdated design of these carrels has caused many problems for our maintenance work. Now, there are newly designed carrels that are lighter, easier for maintenance work, and laminated with brighter colours. Besides, they are designed to house larger monitors and to provide convenient access to power sources and computer interfaces.

Hardware

On the surface of these new carrels are the 17” colour monitors. Coming in hand-in-hand with the new computer carrels are the most advanced DELL Optiplex GX400 PCs with the following configuration:

  • Intel Pentium 4 1.7GHz CPU
  • 256MB RDRAM
  • 40GB Hard Disk
  • 12X CD-RW Drive
  • Others
     
This configuration should meet the most demanding operating system and applications for the next two to three years. With the CD-RW drive, students can easily backup large graphical files, programming projects, data, and so on.

In addition to the above, all monitors in teaching studios A, B, C, D, I, M and O have been replaced with 15” LCD monitors. This can reduce the blocking of view and improve the eye contact between the instructor and students.

Operating Environment

After the removal of the DOS/Windows 3.1/Windows 95 environments, Windows 2000 together with the multi-language packs has been installed. In other words, only Windows 2000 and Chinese/English Windows 98 are available. In the future, newly acquired software packages will be installed in the Windows 2000 environment.

Software

All software packages under the Microsoft Campus License Agreement have been installed. Besides, the following have also been upgraded/installed during this summer:

  • Adobe Photoshop 6.0
  • Macromedia Web Design Studio (Flash 5, Dreamweaver 4, Fireworks 4, Freehand 10)
  • Microsoft Visio 2000 Standard Edition and Technical Edition
  • CorelDRAW 10
  • Q9 2001 Chinese Input Method
  • SPSS 10
  • PenPower Chinese Input Writing Pad 8.0
  • Ulead PhotoImpact 6.0
  • Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4.0
  • Adaptec DirectCD 3.0

The upgrade of the CSC Student Terminal Area will certainly give a fresh and friendly atmosphere when you come and work in here again.