Students

Computers in Every Room: Coup for St.Mark's!

St Mark’s has achieved a first for tertiary residential colleges by providing terminals in every room of the college as a standard item, connecting students to an internal and external e-mail service, the Universities and the Internet.

Every student now has a Sun Microsystem's Sun Ray appliance, comprising screen, keyboard and mouse in their room, linked to a central server. This provides a standard desktop throughout the college with the ability to update software and other applications from one location. The Sun Rays, with no moving parts, are silent devices requiring minimal maintenance. Students can access their files from any appliance in the College - not just the one in their room - 24 hours a day.

The system is now operational, with some 200 machines linked to two Enterprise 450 servers. St Mark's has cabled every room and building for high speed Internet access with the help of Sun Microsystems, ComTech Communications the systems integrator, and Expert Data Cabling Ltd. Students have been issued with user names and passwords which protect the security of their files.

It would have been too expensive to provide personal computers to all students as they are more expensive than Sun Rays and are very costly to manage. There was the further problem of many different computers and applications using the system, with major risk of corruption of data through viruses and the blue screen of death, as well as huge maintenance problems.

St Mark’s previously maintained a central computer room with ten terminals. Already there is an average of 100 users on the system at any one time, demonstrating its advantages. The computer room is still operative for some applications and contains a central printer and scanner. A senior computing science student is the chief administrator of the system.

The Sun Rays will be a major support to effective study. Universities are increasingly putting lecture notes and information on the net and students often need to submit written work and assignments by this means. The whole process will be easier as students will not have to spend so much time waiting for terminals to be freed up at the University. Much more work can be done within the College and in consultation with tutors and colleagues.

St Mark's charges a technology fee to students, which does not exceed more than a few dollars a week which covers provision of the appliance, access to the College network, the University, e-mail, and a very generous quota of free time on the Internet. It is much more cost effective for students than running their own PC, and the College saves some money by being able to reduce the number of computer terminals in the central computer lab.

The St Mark's initiative signals the first deal of its kind for Sun, and the start of a new facility that bridges a gap in Internet access for students living in residential colleges.