Technology at the ol' alma mater?

Miscellaneous discussions. Things that don't have anything to do with Western, Leatherneck Athletics, college sports in general, etc.
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sealhall74
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I just got an early Xmas present. My $150 HP/Google Chromebox just arrived. The "box" is not too much bigger than about 4 2x2 decks of playing cards. I bought a $130 24" Vizio 1080p TV to use as a monitor, plugged in a wireless mouse and keyboard and I am very impressed with the setup for accessing internet, email, and working with Google docs. Last week I took my next door neighbor to Best Buy to replace her laptop. She ended up spending $1000 for a very nice one but all she uses it for is Facebook, email, and online Peapod grocery orders. I think I got the better deal by far.

Just wondering if the university has embraced any of these "thin client" technologies like this yet in the offices and classrooms? Seems like it could be a huge cost/energy/space saver for them.
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sealhall74 wrote:I just got an early Xmas present. My $150 HP/Google Chromebox just arrived. The "box" is not too much bigger than about 4 2x2 decks of playing cards. I bought a $130 24" Vizio 1080p TV to use as a monitor, plugged in a wireless mouse and keyboard and I am very impressed with the setup for accessing internet, email, and working with Google docs. Last week I took my next door neighbor to Best Buy to replace her laptop. She ended up spending $1000 for a very nice one but all she uses it for is Facebook, email, and online Peapod grocery orders. I think I got the better deal by far.

Just wondering if the university has embraced any of these "thin client" technologies like this yet in the offices and classrooms? Seems like it could be a huge cost/energy/space saver for them.
Yes actually, we've done quite a bit with them. I'm not directly involved in that aspect, but it is part of my department (uTech). For example, we have a conference room next to my office that we share with the student development office. Recently, a fairly large TV (older...had been in use elsewhere on campus...maybe as part of an older "connected classroom") that we were able to inherit. We wanted to be able to use it for presentations and stuff (there's no projector in that conference room), so we also inherited a small "thin client" that wasn't being used. Boots up fast, we log in with our credentials, and it loads the stock "image" of Windows 10 over the network, straight from the server. You couldn't really play games on it (not that you would, just saying it's not really high-powered enough to do that), but it's fine for presentations and demonstrations.

One of my coworkers also has a chromebook that they take to meetings. I currently have a really old Mac laptop as my "meeting" computer, although I almost never use it because it's horribly slow. If we do ever get money to get some new stuff, I'd request a chromebook...I don't need anything high-powered for the stuff I'm doing at work.

I know there's other areas of campus that are using them as well, but those are just a couple of examples from my office. I think that thin clients w/ network images are being used elsewhere on campus also, where someone doesn't need anything high-end.
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The Financial Aid Office has used a couple of thin clients for several years. Students are able to use them to access the websites for federal applications, IRS, etc.
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