OIT announces support for Vista, Leopard and other software titles

Posted: 3/07/08
By James Cope

While the  Office of Information Technologies (OIT) Help Desk has been supporting Microsoft Windows Vista for student users since last year, the OIT this week announced it is supporting Vista for faculty and staff as well.  The department also announced campus-wide user support for Leopard, the latest version of the Apple Macintosh operating system.

Vista required a great deal of testing to determine how it interacted with Windows platform applications used by faculty and staff prior to rollout of support. “In particular, we wanted to ensure that Vista, like Windows XP, worked with networked administrative applications,” Help Desk Manager Denise Moser says.

There still are operational issues when running some Windows applications in Vista, Moser notes, including potential problems with data corruption when connecting to native Banner from a Vista PC. These concerns should be resolved sometime this summer by the responsible vendor, according to Moser.

Even so, Vista, which was launched by Microsoft in early 2007, offers some enticing features, including security upgrades and enhanced graphics.

Vista won’t allow the purposeful or inadvertent installation of applications without first prompting the user for approval. Vista also comes with Microsoft’s Windows Defender built in. Defender is an application that runs in the background and guards against spyware.

A Vista feature of special value to Windows users is BitLocker, which enables users to encrypt all data and applications residing on their hard drive(s).

But Bitlocker and Vista’s popular Aero transparent 3-D screen display capability require PCs that are more robust than many of the campus machines running Windows XP.

Windows Vista requires more memory and a faster CPU than its predecessor; installing it on a machine designed for Windows XP may actually slow down your computer. The best way to get Vista is by ordering new equipment with Vista already installed, although you can find out how Vista might perform on your current PC  by downloading and running Microsoft’s Vista Upgrade Advisor.

Should you order a new University Windows PC, you’ll have to specify Vista on your order; otherwise, you will receive a PC with Windows XP Pro by default.   

The same is true for many Macintosh users who are thinking about moving up to the Leopard operating system, says OIT Help Desk Consultant Matt Metzger.  About 20% of University-owned computers are Macs.

Leopard brings with it new features that will please many Mac users, Metzger says. Among them is Time Machine, a utility that backs up what you do as you’re doing it. A new Spaces feature lets Leopard users display and switch between multiple virtual desktops. Leopard brings a major update to Finder, enabling users to find content visually.

Vista and Leopard can be purchased through BuyND for departmental use, or through the Notre Dame Computer Store for use on personally-owned computers.

In addition to support for Windows Vista and Macintosh Leopard, the OIT has added several new additional software titles to its portfolio of supported software.