 "Photo: laptoppreviews.com")
Houghton's Technology Services has been kept busy during the past year. Specifically, Houghton's laptop program has been put to an end, so freshmen students will no longer be provided a laptop for their four-year stay at Houghton. Also, in the past several months, Technology Services has orchestrated the transition of Houghton's e-mail server from Windows to G-mail.
Houghton has provided laptops for its students since the 1990s.
"It was a way to let Houghton stand out from the crowd" and help achieve Houghton's goal of being "globally engaged," despite the college's small size and rural setting, according to Vice President of Admissions Wayne MacBeth, who was involved in the Admissions' part of the decision to end the program.
But times have changed. "Some people are bringing their own laptops," he said, as the price of laptops in general has decreased. The importance of a laptop program in a student's decision process for a college, "has virtually disappeared" and hardly anyone has claimed that "Houghton is my choice" because of its laptop program. Ending the program better serves current needs by letting students have "the option to make their own choices."
According to Director of Technology Services Don Haingray, student satisfaction with the program "was still pretty high" when inquiries about the continuation of the program were originally made. However, as Admissions' research had shown, many students had other technology preferences, and it was determined that the money for the program would be put to better use elsewhere. "It just makes sense to make this change," said Haingray.
This transition logistically represents for Technology Services "a shift from knowing every machine on the network by name, to. . .a much more complex environment," explained Haingray. Now, there will be computers on the network that Technology Services is not as familiar with, which will require a wide variety of operating systems. "So, from a support standpoint," there are "more issues in general." However, "there are some strategies we're looking at," he added, that would mitigate such complications. Aside from working case by case with problems as they come, Haingray does not anticipate many logistical issues.
Another change for Technology Services at Houghton is the recent transition of e-mail servers from Windows to G-mail. There are several reasons this change was made, according to Haingray, and one of them being the request made by the Alumni office to give students the opportunity to keep the same e-mail addresses after college, which could be accomplished with G-mail. As a result, the decision was made to add the last two numbers of the students' graduation years to their addresses to avoid confusion with the much greater number of addresses that will be seen in the system in the future.
According to Seth Taylor, Technology Service's Network Administrator, the benefits of using G-mail also includes the opportunity to take advantage of the constant updates and new features that G-mail offers, noting that G-mail is in a "continuous state of development and improvement." The use of G-mail also provides users with an exponentially larger amount of storage, about 50 times the 150 MB limit of the previous server. What is furthermore helpful is that G-mail is a service "that people are familiar with when they come here," pointed out Haingray.
Students' responses to the e-mail server transition seems to generally affirm Haingray's expectations.
Sophomore Megan Toombs expressed her satisfaction with the change, saying, " I think the changeover is fantastic. I do not have to worry about being over the e-mail limit anymore. I love the chat function on G-mail, and I like how I can personalize my account."
Technology Services has focused on several smaller projects this year as well, such as some changes in web search restrictions. Erin Bard, a student employee of Technology Services expressed excitement with some of the things he has been working on.
"One of the kind of cool things we've been working on," he said, "is getting a higher speed connection to the more peripheral parts of campus, like the Equestrian center or the Center for Sustainability." Technology Services, in all projects, whether big or small, is always striving towards "providing the faculty and staff a better experience," said Bard
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