reBryheim Muse works in the Media Lab. Jake Bradner/ The Whetstone

reBryheim
Muse works in the Media Lab. Jake Bradner/ The Whetstone

By Jake Bradner, The Whetstone

During the second week of Dr. Laganella’s Composing with Computers class, junior Zahra Marcus and her classmates had problems with the computers at the Media Lab.

“We had trouble loading up the program on the some of the computers,” Marcus said. “There are ten people in the class, only four of the computers worked. So we could only use four of them since IT didn’t know how to fix them.”

Later in the semester, after the class had another computer problem, students and the professor marched down to the IT office and demanded their computers be fixed.

“People still couldn’t load up the program,” Marcus said. “They couldn’t even sign in, and it would freeze.”

The students solved the problems themselves.

Marcus said they had to unplug certain cords, restart the computers (some still failed to work), and switch on the Wi-Fi.

“They fixed a couple things, but not the whole thing,” Marcus said. “But then, after that, we’ve been doing fine because we knew how to do it ourselves.”

Sophomore Matthew Horton, another student in Composing with Computers, also said it takes a long time to fix the computers.

“It mostly takes a week or two to have these computers fixed,” Horton said.

Multimedia Communication Professor Ron Douglas said he has faced problems with the computers in the Media Lab this semester in his classes.

“There were problems with the Adobe software used for Digital Photography and Video Production classes” he said. “The problem seemed to be with the Adobe licenses.”

IT started working on the issues as soon as they could and fixed them the first day it was encountered, said Chief Information Officer Paul Copeland.

However, he said the software activation required access to a license server over the network.

“Certain network settings in the lab computers prevented re-activation of the software after IT had initially solved the problem” Copeland said. “Since then, IT reconfigured the license server and network setup in the lab to make sure software activation works smoothly.”

Multimedia Communication department Chair Tery Griffin said students pay class fees on top of tuition to pay for the special technology required for these classes.

For example, Laganella’s class costs $130 in fees, while most Multimedia Lab classes charge students $60.

Griffin also said that printing from Media Lab computers has been an issue.

“They’ve gotten fixed several times,” she said. “But then one computer or another can’t talk to the printers again.”

This is essential for her class, Digital Imaging, she said, which is about developing materials for print environments.

”Not being able to print those projects is really a problem for students,” she said. “It’s not like there are other printers on campus they can go and use.”

Some students said they are still experiencing problems opening programs in the Media Lab computers

“I’m supposed to have a multimedia license to click on and it’s not there,” sophomore John Burn said when trying to connect to the software Reason.

Douglas said there was still a problem with one of the computers opening up Adobe software for a student in their class, but, he said, IT has been much more responsive since Laganella’s class marched down to the IT department.

“As of right now, everything is working,” Douglas said. “However, I’ve had problems streaming videos in 206C throughout the semester, and which yet has not been resolved.”