Bryn Mawr College

On January 8-9, 2010, Information Services will upgrade the College Communications Center (aka Webmail) to Zimbra 6. Zimbra 6 offers a variety of new features and improvements including many requested by members of our community. More information and sneak peek opportunities will be available over the next couple of months as we prepare for this upgrade. For a quick look at some of the highlights, go to http://www.zimbra.com/products/whats_new.html If you have any questions about the upgrade, please contact the Help Desk at 610-526-7440 or help@brynmawr.edu .

Earlier this week, we posted about a problem some individuals were having with opening Word, printing, and a few other issues. After much investigation, the problem was tracked to a particular server which was behaving irregularly and causing computers to react irregularly when communicating with it.  The problem has now been resolved;  everyone who reported having this problem has been contacted and is able to work normally.  We do not expect that it will reoccur.  The issue with the affected server was a software malfunction. If you are experiencing problems with your computer, please let us know as your issue may not ... Read more»

Some community members have been experiencing computer troubles in the past few days.  It may appear as: Unable to open Word, or severe delay opening Word Unable to print, severely delayed printing, or hanging when trying to print to some models of HP printers (4250, 4350, 4200, 4700, 2015, etc.) from any program. At this time, we have tracked this to a problem specifically with these printer models in our environment, and we are working with HP to resolve the problem.  We have been unable to identify a specific update or change which caused this to occur; at this time, it does not ... Read more»

It has been brought to our attention that not all of the public printers were defaulting properly to duplex (double-sided) printing.  The reason for this has been identified, and we expect that as of tomorrow this will work properly.  If you continue to have problems with duplex printing, please let the Help Desk know (help@brynmawr.edu, x7440) as soon as possible.

We've recently been asked by several students and faculty members how HC and SC students can login to Bryn Mawr labs and public computers. Any Haverford or Swarthmore student who is registered for a Bryn Mawr class can stop by the Help Desk and obtain a username and password which allows him or her to log into public and lab computers, print, access library resources, and store files. Haverford and Swarthmore students can only obtain these logins in person as sufficient data is not provided by HC and SC to verify identities over the phone. These accounts are automatically generated on ... Read more»

As of August 2009, new software called GoPrint has been added to our public printing environments requiring that each print job be released. The reason for this change is to raise individual and community awareness about how many pages are printed, in conjunction with the College budget reduction process begun in the 08-09 academic year. At this time, there remains no charge for printing in public labs. Frequently Asked Questions: Q: Does this affect the printer in my office or other academic/administrative location? A:  No.  At this time, this system is in use only in IS Public locations.  This means Canaday, Carpenter, Collier, Guild, ... Read more»

As of August 10, 2009 Dalton 20 and the Dalton laptop cart are no longer booked via the College Communications Center (a.k.a. Webmail or Zimbra) and will be booked via EMS in keeping with other classrooms and resources. Getting Started with the Dalton Laptops: Book the laptops and a space to use them (Dalton 20 or another Dalton Classroom). If you haven't used these machines before and need orientation, please contact Multimedia Services in advance and make an appointment to get familiar with what's needed. Multimedia will deliver the cart to your classroom before the beginning of your class or meeting period. You or ... Read more»

It has been brought to our attention that the voicemail system is not consistently setting Message Waiting Indicators to "On" -- for some folks, this is the "voicemail" light on your phone, for others, it is a tone you hear when you pick up the phone. Please check your voicemail frequently as you may have unheard messages, though you may have not been notified.  Also, be aware that the notification may work sometimes and not others. We are looking into this, and will be discussing the issue with our service vendor.  However, the voicemail system is one of the oldest systems on ... Read more»

On Sunday afternoon, Bryn Mawr lost all Internet connectivity and partial Tri-Co connectivity, from about 12:30PM.  As of 7:40pm, the connection is working, and all services are reachable. The failure was not on our campus, and was caused by a multi-location power failure in carrier facilities due to flooding. No email was lost as a result of this outage, although it may take a few hours for our servers to work through the inbound and outbound email backlog. Please direct any questions through the Help Desk (help@brynmawr.edu, x7440)

Bryn Mawr Blogs and Forums will be unavailable on Friday evening beginning at 6:00 PM for a scheduled migration to a new server. This includes all "blogs.brynmawr.edu" and "forums.brynmawr.edu" pages. This migration has been tested, and based on the results of that test, we expect the outage to last less than 30 minutes. If you have any questions or concerns about this outage, please direct them to the Help Desk (x7440 or help@brynmawr.edu). Thanks, Andrew Lacey Web Applications and Systems Administrator alacey@brynmawr.edu 610-526-5630

From: Janet Scannell Shortly, Information Services will begin managing the updates that all college-owned computers receive to their Windows XP or Macintosh operating systems. Updates will be tested in advance and then distributed overnight. This process will be piloted in April and May and will begin campus-wide starting in June. Below is a summary of points of interest. If you want more detail about this change please visit: http://www.brynmawr.edu/computing/WorkstationMaintenance.shtml For Desktop Users: This will affect both Mac and Windows computers. Patching your computer software will require a reboot. If a machine is on the network it will be ... Read more»

Blackboard will be unavailable for approximately an hour, beginning at 7:00 AM this Thursday morning.  Our colleagues at Swarthmore need to physically relocate one of the database servers which Blackboard uses.  We expect this outage to be uneventful, and to be over by 8:00 am.