I know... I haven't submitted any reports this quarter. Hopefully this report can cover some more ground than usual and capture a bit of a snapshot of technology at Ray. I will divide the report by topic.

<strong>Printers</strong>

My work at Ray has changed a lot, but printer problems have remained stubbornly constant. Most of the problems stem from not being able to print to a shared printer, as teachers move printers around or the sharing computer is off or offline. One mistake I made my first year was using its IP address rather than the more stable network name.

<strong>Computer Lab</strong>

Having the resources to get modern Core 2 Duo computers and upgrade all memory to 1-2 GB is certainly not a privilege most schools have. (Neither is having both a projector and a separate smartboard.) I'm glad that Ms. Zivko's presence convinced the office to address certain inefficiencies in the technology, such as ordering spare bulbs for CPS discontinued projectors instead of waiting for a new model.

<strong>DVD Playback</strong>

Choppy video/sound playback from DVD was a problem I encountered on over 6 computers. In each case, it was the IDE controller configuration in Windows that was reverting to the old and slow PIO transfer mode, instead of a faster DMA variant. The fix is to go to the device manager, find the IDE controller for the drive, and uninstall, then reboot. There is a Visual Basic script that does this fix automatically, here:

http://winhlp.com/node/10

<strong>Misc. Software Updates</strong>

Some of the CPS updates are really taking their toll on computers, particularly ones with less than 512 MB ram. While windows updates have filled up some older 10 GB partitions completely, McAfee has slowed even newer computers to a crawl, with times when the process takes over 50% of CPU as the computer sits idle.

It's been a great 3 years working at Ray and with CUIP. I hope to stay in touch through various means.