All about hardware
Information Services and Technology (IS&T) would like to invite members of the MIT community to a forum on the recommendation process for desktop and mobile computing hardware. The event will be held from 1:30 to 3 p.m. on Wednesday, April 4, in the Sala De Puerto Rico in the Student Center (W20).
IS&T's Hardware Core Team was chartered in 2006 to collect both vendor information and community input on best practices for purchasing new computers and peripherals. The team will share insights from its meetings with vendors at the April forum. If you have ideas for improving the computer purchasing process at the Institute, this is your forum.
The Hardware Core Team consists of representatives from the Computing Help Desk, the Computer Buying Advice Group, the Administrative Desktop Renewal Program and the four platform coordinators (Windows, Macintosh, Linux and mobile devices). If you have input for the team, send mail to hardware-core@mit.edu.
For IS&T's current hardware recommendations, see the Computing Buying Advice page at web.mit.edu/ist/services/hardware/presales.html.
SAP upgrade over Patriot's Day weekend
An SAP Production system upgrade that will bring MIT up to the most current release of SAP is scheduled for Patriot's Day weekend. The SAP Production environment will be unavailable beginning at 7 p.m. Friday, April 13, and will return to service at 6 a.m. on Tuesday, April 17.
SAP, ECAT and all SAPweb activity, including Employee Self Service (ESS), time sheet entry/approval, requisitioning, journal vouchers and credit card verification will be inaccessible during this maintenance period. The Data Warehouse will be available during the cutover weekend. The upgrade will not change SAPweb and ESS transactions; EHS SAPweb applications will have a new look but the same functionality. End-user training requirements are expected to be minimal.
IS&T will provide more specific information on system availability at web.mit.edu/sapbiz and through other communications. If you have questions about the upgrade, contact Kevin Lyons (klyons@mit.edu) or Sandy Pata (spata@mit.edu).
Engineering books online
Through the MIT Libraries' subscription to Books24x7, the MIT community has online access to hundreds of books on information technology and computer science. Now the MIT community can also access Books24x7's Engineering Pro Collection, a multidisciplinary reference resource. It offers hundreds of engineering books from myriad publishers, including MIT Press, IEEE, John Wiley & Sons, Cambridge University Press and McGraw-Hill.
To check out this online collection, go to the Books24x7 web site at library.books24x7.com.libproxy.mit.edu. Under "Browse Topics" on the right, select "Engineering Topics" from the drop-down menu, and choose from the list of categories. You can also view recently added books, the Top 10 books from last week, or do your own custom search. If you have feedback about this new service, you can reach the staff at Barker Engineering Library via the comments page at libraries.mit.edu/barker/ask-barker.html.
MIT Linux users: Stand and be counted!
To better understand the needs of the Linux community at MIT, IS&T has created the Linux "Stand and Be Counted" survey. If you're a Linux user and would like to cast your vote for the distributions, products and services that are important to you, visit web.mit.edu/surveys/linux between March 21 and March 30. The survey should take less than 10 minutes to fill out.
To find out more about current Linux offerings at MIT, go to web.mit.edu/ist/topics/linux.
Digitalk is compiled by Information Services and Technology.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on March 21, 2007 (download PDF).
