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Home > Information Technology > IT Newsletter
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| Information Technology Newsletter |
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Volume 2, Issue 5
July 2010
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Points of Interest in this Issue:
Hewlett-Packard Installation Update
By George Sullivan |
 Months ago IT began preparations to swap the Dell computers for new HP computers. You may be wondering how the project is going. Through the first weekend of June, a total of 2,171 new HPs are in place. This represents approximately 60% of the computers on the three coastal campuses that need to be replaced. We anticipate roughly 80% of the project will be completed by the beginning of the fall term. Since changing the first computers in February, the Information Technology department, along with our third party partners, has aggressively worked to make the switch as quickly and seamlessly as possible. Though our associates have provided an essential ingredient to the success of this project, it is the staff in the IT department who has taken on double and triple duties, working long hours and weekends, moving this endeavor forward at a quick pace and dealing with unforeseeable difficulties, who are the heroes. Their tireless devotion, consistent good attitude and unflagging persistence provided, and still provides, the thaumaturgy for this project. Printer EnvironmentOne outcome of the HP swap has been the realization that our printer environment needs better management. Currently, each department decides what printers to purchase and must stock their own inks and provide repair when necessary. This results in the college purchasing a great many inkjet printers that are cheap to buy but expensive to operate. Printing with a color inkjet printer can cost up to 12 times as much as printing the same sheet in grayscale with a laser printer. Inkjet inks dry out and become useless much sooner than laser toner. Duty cycles tend to be much smaller for inkjet printers. For these and many other reasons, the college is contemplating steps to consolidate printer purchasing, reassess color printing and increase productivity of new printer purchases. This will reduce college printer expenses, increase printer speed and productivity and provide color printing when needed to all departments. Palm Beach State has a new voice mail system. It includes many wonderful features. We encourage you to explore the possibilities. Before you move too far, however, please take the time to set up your personal voice mail message. We suggest you write your response with the information you would want if you called another person. Give your name, perhaps your department and any other relevant information. Keep it short. Recording a personal message presents a professional and customer-oriented image. It reflects well on us all.
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Did You Know?
By Alex Calderon
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Having issues logging in to an online account?
Try clearing your browser settings. There are many web-related issues that can be solved with a few simple clicks. As you surf the web, your browser stores information about the sites you visit. Usually, it is helpful to have this information stored to improve browsing speed among other things. In certain cases, such as an unsuccessful attempt to log in to a webpage, clearing the browser settings can be a solution. 
If you're using Internet Explorer 8, click on the Safety button and select 'Delete Browsing History.' A window will pop up allowing you to select the information stored by your web browser that you'd like to delete. After clearing, remember to close and reopen your browser window before attempting to log in again.
Exempt employees can work from home using our Remote Desktop setup. Visit www.palmbeachstate.edu/remotedesktop/ for full instructions. When using Remote Desktop, you will be logging in remotely to a computer on campus. This can provide you with your My Documents, Intranet access, Panthernet and many other on-campus computer services.
You can easily create a PDF of almost anything on an Apple computer. With an open text document, web page, picture, etc. you have the option to "Save as PDF" in the Print menu. PDF files are a universal standard, compatible with Microsoft, Apple, and Linux operating systems.
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Unified Messaging / New Voicemail
By Mike Merker and Marion Sanders
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 In our continual quest to provide the College community with tools to make your working life easier and help you to be more productive, the College IT department is releasing the next phase of our updated communications tools. Everyone has the new Communicator software or access to the web-based Communicator software that allows you to see if someone is at their computer and to send instant messages, as well as look at someone's schedule for free and busy times and to do desktop video conferencing (not available with the web-based Communicator). The next step is for us to move more of your communications to a convenient place where you spend much of your workday - your email account. Your voicemail is available within Outlook as well as your email and calendar by voice command.
Your voicemail is still available on your phone but can now also be accessed in your Outlook inbox as well, even through Outlook Web Access, just like an email message. You are able to listen to the voicemail on your computer or by pressing the message button on your desk phone, or dialing 561-868-3992 from any phone and following the prompts. When you call to access your voicemail, you will find a nice bonus - the voicemail system can also read your email messages to you, let you respond to those messages using a voice recording, read your calendar appointments to you and even let you reschedule your appointments using voice commands. Now, instead of having to be at a computer to get your email and voicemail, you can retrieve and respond to messages from the convenience of your telephone.
Voicemail in Outlook - it's exciting, fun and very useful. A tutorial is available under the URL http://www.palmbeachstate.edu/Documents/Help_Desk/MicrosoftExchangeVoicemail.pdf
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iTAC Tips & Tricks
By Laura Feldman
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Two ways to quickly fill a range of cells with the same data in Microsoft Excel
To enter the same data in several cells by only typing it once:
 Select the range of cells.
Type the data.
Press Ctrl + Enter. The data will be repeated in all of the selected cells.
To fill a range using the Auto Fill feature:
Enter the data in the first cell.
Position the mouse pointer on the Auto Fill handle which is a black square at the lower right corner of the cell (pointer changes to a plus sign). Drag across the cells into which you want to insert the information. The data will be repeated in all of the selected cells.
To quickly fill a range of cells that follows a pattern such as a series of numbers:
 Enter the data in the first cell.
Enter the data in the second cell to establish a pattern.
Select the two cells.
Drag the fill handle across the range that you want to fill. Excel will automatically fill in the cells with the same pattern. For example, if you want a series of 2, 4, 6, 8... type 2 and 4 in the first two cells.
Note: For days of the week or months of the year, you only need to type in the first cell. For example, type Monday in the first cell, drag the fill handle and Excel automatically fills in Tuesday, Wednesday, etc.
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Famous Quote:
"The telephone wire, as we know it, has become too slow and too small to handle Internet traffic. It took 75 years for telephones to be used by 50 million customers, but it took only four years for the Internet to reach that many users."
--Lori Valigra, Assistant Editor/Staff Writer, The Gulf of Maine Times
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Information Technology's Mission
In Support of Palm Beach State College's mission and the Business Services unit, the mission of Information Technology (IT) is to provide the college community with technology solutions, management, infrastructure and vision designed to enhance our students, faculty, research, public and administrative customers' experience.
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Palm Beach State College has recognized a need to provide up to date design software, and has addressed the issue in two ways. First, negotiating a contract with Adobe and purchasing their Design Premium Suite. Second, by negotiating a contract with Microsoft on the Expressions Studio Ultimate Suite. Both options are viable, and will help to bring Palm Beach State into a new era of digital designing.
Photoshop CS5 Extended
Expression Web + SuperPreview
Information Technology
