Where are all of the University/College Macheads at?
Warning : You may be forced to endure countless spelling and grammatical errors. As well as my inability to string two coherent thoughts together which is only followed by my inability to comprehend the use of periods. Proceed at your own risk!!!
I am in my first year at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. At the UOG there is virtually no mac support! They say it would cost too much to support it (yeah right)! I was just wondering if there are any macheads out there who wanted to share their university experiences, having a mac and all. I hear that many universities/colleges have campus wide wireless LAN which is compliant with airport and airport extreme. Here, the only place where you can access the internet wirelessly on campus is in the library and even that is only a pilot project. I am heavily considering purchasing an iBook come September. Any feedback would be great!!!
I am in my first year at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. At the UOG there is virtually no mac support! They say it would cost too much to support it (yeah right)! I was just wondering if there are any macheads out there who wanted to share their university experiences, having a mac and all. I hear that many universities/colleges have campus wide wireless LAN which is compliant with airport and airport extreme. Here, the only place where you can access the internet wirelessly on campus is in the library and even that is only a pilot project. I am heavily considering purchasing an iBook come September. Any feedback would be great!!!
Comments
they're probably 40% of the user base, and 5% of my time. (and that's not because i blow them off)
Originally posted by macaddict74
Warning : You may be forced to endure countless spelling and grammatical errors. As well as my inability to string two coherent thoughts together which is only followed by my inability to comprehend the use of periods. Proceed at your own risk!!!
Oh, and you use exclamation marks way too much.
Sorry, the director of my summer camp is from Guelph, and we generally chant that whenever he comes into a room. In fact I think his father teaches at U of Guelph...Butler's his name. My brother was going to look at that school, but then decided not to.
Anyway, I go to a small school near Philly. All of the school computers are Dells (although there is one old strawberry iMac buried back in the back of one of the computer labs) The network only officially supports windows machines, but basically that means nothing. I can access other people's computers over the network (to an extent) and obviously have no problem connecting to the internet via the LAN.
Anyway, for Gueph's wireless network (such as it is), I'd imagine you shouldn't have much problem. As long as it's 802.11b/g I don't see any reason why it should give you any grief. The only problem I'd think you'd have is how to scramble enough money to buy an Airport/Airport Extreme card...
As for my Mac experience, it's crazy; almost all of my profs here use Macs. My botany professor taught the course with an iBook chugging along on OS 9, and my Macroevolution professor hosted our PowerPoint presentations on his TiBook.
Aside from seeing just about everyone with 12" PB's iBooks, or iPods, I think the coolest Mac moment for me here was last week where I was studying at the Gerstein Library, where they give you Ethernet jacks to plug into the campus network. I logged on and found four shared iTunes playlists, just like that. Man, iTunes sharing is f--king cool.
There's even full tech support 24/7 on campus. Most labs on campus have many macs to use as well (G4 towers). There's airport connection available throughout the entire campus. It's really a great thing...except...
The University charges $500 per semester to use the manditory service. If you figure, that's $1000/year. If I am here for 4 years, that's $4000! It's really a rip off, considering i could have bought 2 G5's by the time I graduate! I love the mac-friendly environment. I just wish it wasn't so Communist in structure.
Besides, I'm sure the University is making a bundle of dough on this thing. They have contracts with Compaq and Apple. I've also heard that Apple is giving away free computers for Educational institutions. Seems to be an attempt to get "generation next" hooked on Mac; not a bad thing!
As for Mac support her at Mac (it gets confusing, i know) isn't bad. The campus store is an authorized apple repair centre and sells lots of apple accessories (i've bought ram, an AE card, an iPod and had my AlBooks white-spotted screen replaced there). I had no problems getting onto the campus network in res. Like Guelph, Mac has a wireless project in the works in our Student Centre. I just bought an AE card to try it out. Unfortunately, i haven't been successful. I can get signal and an IP, but i can't get through the VPN they have setup. i will figure it out sometime, i just haven't had the time lately due to exams.
One thing i do know, is that file transfers (of legit stuff, of course) between Mac and Guelph are unreal. I'm talking 5MB/second. Multi-gigabyte files take minutes to send (i'm a multimedia student, so sending projects to friends at guelph in a timely fashion is easy). The only problem is UoG caps you guys to 750megs per week (during the day) so large transfers must be done on weekends or after 1am. I think this is for the best though, because if i were to use up that much of Mac's bandwidth during the day i think someone might take notice.
PM me and we'll exchange contact info.
The school is almost all PC, with the exception of a few Macs scattered around in offices and a half dozen old iMacs in the library computer cluster. All are "unsupported", which means "unmaintained" and are consequently in pretty bad shape. There is no wireless network, and the ethernet jacks spread throughout the library are deactivated -- bring in a notebook and you can't get it onto the network!
To make matters worse, logging on to any of the Dells running XP takes at least 2 minutes as it runs through it's login and configuration process -- sometimes after 10 minutes or more you still aren't logged in!
Once you are logged in you have access to various network resources, but you don't have control over what's on your desktop or in the Start menu or virtually any aspect of system configuration; I've logged in to a machine only to have someone else's Chinese language chat program launch -- huh?!?
Officially Macs are supported for VPN, but logging in to network volumes doesn't actually work.
At any normal place this sort of incompetence would be entirely unacceptable, but here it's just normal as can be and everyone seems to have given up hope of having things work right -- much like New York in general actually. The only good thing here is free and unlimited (so far) printing -- awfully handy for printing out all those electronic journal articles.
And no, I don't feel better now.
I know who you know that I know (which can also be confusing). It is the one and only Matt with a Powerbook who is in my rez. Very cool coincidence. I PM'ed you by the way.
The bandwidth cap here kinda sucks but over weekends it is nice. I have come to realize that I am spoiled here at Guelph versus many colleges/universities in Canada and the United States. I get my own single room and a balcony! It's very comfortable. Almost too comfortable. I just wish I had something better than my G4 350.:-( I have upgraded the ram and HD and VC but the processor has to go. I just don't have the money! I am beginning to wonder if that phrase is becoming the norm for college/university students. 1 job over Christmas and at least 2 if not 3 over the summer, YAY! I guess it's worth it for a next-gen iBook! I can't wait!
Things are good if you are a Mac fan here
1) Washington State University (main Pullman campus)
Mostly PC workstations (DELL and self-built). QuickSilver, MDD, and iMac (slot-loaders) were being used in the labs and graphics dept. Students can borrow either PowerBook G4 Titanium or HP/Compaq notebooks for classes. Not bad.. since Bill Gates donated $$$ and built a classroom with all PCs.
I knew quite a few Mac heads on campus.
2) Central Washington University (main Ellensburg campus)
There is a computer lab with eMac in it. Other than that... I saw many beige Macs. Not to mention, self-built PC workstations.
Once in a while, I see students use Mac in the campus.
Community College
1) Bellevue Community College
This is the third largest institution in the Washington State (UW on top, WSU on second, then BCC on third). However, they are phasing out Macs. Yeep.. The Gates' Foundation took part in the main computer lab. Those Macs (PowerMac G3 B&W and QuickSilver) were being moved from the center of the lab to the side. People who need to use Macs need to ask the lab assistant to get the mouse and standing. No chair. Terrible.
Originally posted by alcimedes
wireless is platform independent. i do IT work at a Big 10 school in the US. have have lots of mac users in our departments, and i promise you, they don't make more work for me.
they're probably 40% of the user base, and 5% of my time. (and that's not because i blow them off)
We're all about macs at this big 10 school, too.
Campus wide wireless works fine with Macs.
There are a number of clusters, some are all Macs (the Apple Orchard in the basement of the main library and one of the CS clusters are all iMacs, G4 700 MHz), some are partially Macs (art clusters with PowerMacs, single 733 or dual 1.42, the cluster in the dorm next to me has a bunch of PowerMacs @ 450 MHz). There are also plenty of windows clusters as well, and some Sun machines scattered around.
I see plenty of iBooks and PowerBooks around, if I'm on the wireless network, I can see maybe 50 or so shared iTunes libraries. There's plenty of Mac love, and a very large amount of MicroSoft hate around. Lots of Linux love as well, and, if you know the right people, fanatics of SGI, VAX and anything else you might find.
Apparently the amount of students who use macs here is on the rise (30% or so right now).
So yeah, it's nice to go to a school that supports macs so much, and the airport access is definitely a plus.
wireless is platform independent.
Oh no it's not. I assure you. My library at URI has the brilliant idea of "security" in the same breath as "Windows." They have non-WEP 802.11 networks in other buildings that you can just join but...those are far away from my dorm, which is right next to the library. They use 802.1x and certificates for authentication. In 10.2 I had to use this app from a company called Meetinghouse to get on the net and it was real shady. They told me 10.3 would have this built in but I haven't tested it yet because I don't have 10.3.
Believe me alcimedes MS finds a way to make everything platform independent require Windows. Like the Internet, wireless, now they're taking a stab at music and multimedia, and it's partially working.
I'm a telecommunications major and this department is almost all macs. We have a multimedia lab with about 30 dual 1GHz G4's, superdrives, 1 gig of ram and 17" studio displays. Its a pretty nice lab. I wish it were G5 though.
I have an iBook with airport and have had no problems with my mac for the 3 years I've been here. The mac support is great here.