UNT General Access Labs:
What we did this summer ...
er, this fall ... uh, this winter?

By Dr. Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner, Student Computing Services Manager

For those of you who have been reading Benchmarks Online for several years, you may have wondered, "Whatever happened to the annual 'What we did last summer - General Access Labs' article that Elizabeth writes every year?" (I know you were just crushed when it did not appear this September!). Well, the problem was - many of us running the labs fell behind in our hardware and software renovations this year primarily due to dramatic changes in software packages and hardware supplies. I am happy to report, however, that we have all pretty much finished our scheduled upgrade work for the year and as always, the students are benefiting from the latest and greatest in technology during their studies at UNT.

Beginning with my lab - the Academic Computing Services/Adaptive General Access Lab - we literally tore down the entire establishment and re-built it from scratch. First, we got rid of lab tables that we had had for almost 20 years. We have replaced them with sleek, pearl-grey new tables; I am so lucky that my boss had 'table envy' upon seeing these beauties in the COBA labs and felt it was time for major renovation of our facilities. An additional bonus from the new tables is that their design allowed us to add five more machines to our lab. This is a major plus for the students and has cut down on the waiting list and lines outside the door.

The ACS/Adaptive lab staff then upgraded all of  the lab's computers to Pentium Dual Core 830 Towers with sound and video. DVD burners are featured on every machine and students are also able to use ATechFlash Pro9 multi-format card readers installed on each machine. These readers support 10 flash media formats:

1. (CF) Compact Flash™ Type I
2. (CF) Compact Flash™ Type II
3. (MD) Microdrive™
4. (MMC) MultiMedia™
5. (SD) Secure Digital™(true 4-bit support)
6. (SM) Smart Media™
7. (MS) Memory Stick™
8. (PRO) Memory Stick PRO™ (true 4-bit support)
9. (MG) MagicGate Memory Stick™
10. (xD) xD-Picture Card™.

This card reader is especially helpful for those folks needing to work with photos from digital cameras. All of the 29 new PC's in the lab are running Windows XP. Applications are distributed to the machines via ZENworks 6.5 utilizing a newer way of packaging applications which make their on-demand delivery much faster.

The ACS/Adaptive Lab is still being worked on. We are currently evaluating our monitors with the intent to soon upgrade to 20.1 - inch flat-panel displays. Our new adaptive machines are still under construction. Additionally we purchased and installed a Dell 5100cn color laser printer with color - printing of student assignments accessible with permission from the lab staff and management.

As mentioned above, the labs located in the College of Business Administration also received a "table face-lift" which allowed them to put more machines in their rooms. The COBA labs feature tower PC's and 20.1 - inch flat panel displays. New Dell printers were installed and a new COBA graduate lab has been established in BA333. COBA also has several email/web-browsing kiosks outside of the lab area on the first floor of the Business Administration Building.

In the College of Arts and Sciences, the summer upgrade theme was "add more user kiosks" because of the incredible popularity of the original email/web-browsing kiosks found on the third floor of the GAB. CAS added six stand-up kiosks in the Wooten Hall first floor atrium, six sit-down kiosks in the GAB second floor study area, and updated the GAB third floor kiosk area adding electrical connections for the carrels so students can plug in their laptops and not drain their laptop batteries. Chairs were purchased for all these carrels.

Keeping with the kiosk theme - the College of Education lab now features several kiosks outside their main facility also.

The College of Music folks were busy this summer. Scott Krejci, lab manager writes, "The College of Music Computer Lab offers a variety of opportunities for audio production and recording. Possessing robust audio software available on all its computers, the COM Lab also touts a new 12’x10’ isolation booth connected to an industry-standard ProTools workstation. This workstation is equipped with leading industry plugins and software which, when combined with a wide array of microphones, can be used in the production of all styles of music. Students wishing to experiment with any type of recording are encouraged to check out our facilities." Krejci further adds that the lab has a new, more robust MIDI workstation featuring Proteus 2000 and Nord synthesizers and a huge cache of impressive virtual instrument libraries including The Vienna Symphonic Library, East/West Symphonic Library, Mach Five Library with Latin and Middle Eastern instrument additions, Reason, and Native Instrument Libraries.

In other areas, the School of Visual Arts continues to offer the finest printing facilities for student course-based art work and the lab at the University of North Texas Dallas campus has all new small-form-factor machines and several kiosk and laptop areas. The Willis 24-hr lab has also upgraded to all new small-form-factor machines and has added .Net to its list of supported applications. The Willis lab now also has five laser printers to keep up with printing demand. The Graduate Lab proudly sports new lab chairs and the PACS/SMHM lab has a significantly larger technical staff. The College of Engineering continues to plan a facility re-construction to accommodate the increasing use of the Research Park.

So, though we all dealt with new Novell upgrades, new hardware architecture, many major room and furniture renovations, and new operating systems - we have finally managed to get most of it done. Come by all of our labs sometime; you will be pleased with our state-of-the-art facilities and great customer service! As always, you can find out everything you need to know about the labs by visiting www.gal.unt.edu.

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