Is This Thing Still On?
Ok, so...I've been lazy. We'll pretend I've been busy.
Studying? Prosthodontics? P'shaw. I've been
goofing off.
Missed a stack of birthdays on the list, so sincerest apologies to Gillogly, Lauren, Alissa, Jason Allen, Davids Dyer and Ayala, Shahram, and Nicole for that oversight. I hope you were all still able to celebrate without recognition on "teh intarweb".
Notes
Added a stack of notes to the
Note Vault. Many (read: most) of them are for materials we've already been tested or quizzed over, and a certain number of them (read: all) were e-mailed out to the entire class anyway. Hopefully the
Freshmen will be able to get some use out of them.
The Radiography, Nutrition, and Pathology notes might still come in handy, however, if you deleted those e-mails or something.
I'm planning on keeping the website regularly updated once again, so if you send in notes, I'll make it a point to get them added in a timely manner.
XP Service Pack 2
The big thing with the computers right now is probably
Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2). Computing resources hasn't finalized their testing on SP2, but so far there don't appear to be any significant reasons not to upgrade. SP2 should be available from
Windows Update and will probably be of sufficient size that you'll want to download it in the cubes.
Because of a security feature in Symantec Antivirus, SP2's Security Center will alert you that your AV status cannot be determined. You can turn off AV monitoring by clicking the alert bubble and clicking "Change the way Security Center alerts me" or something similar. While Symantec has pushed the patch date for our version back to January, we should be getting a new version of Symantec Client Security sometime soon which doesn't exhibit this behavior.
SP2 also contains a number of Wireless Connectivity enhancements. As a result, I've been uninstalling ProSet from some of our laptops and allowing Windows to manage the wireless. Not only does Windows automatically connect to preferred networks, but several systems that were having a startup sequence problem (a two-minute delay during startup) no longer showed this problem after switching over to Windows wireless management. If you would like to try this, let me know.
Outlook Import Schedule
I've been infomed that the official version of the Outlook import schedule is now available on DS Support Pro, in case you weren't satisfied with Hoeppner's version.
VitalBook Problems
Most of the problems people seemed to be having with VitalBooks appear to have been corrected by the 3.5.3 patch (available from the Help-Software Updates menu in VitalBooks) combined with having registered an account (from the Help-Update License menu) using the Redemption Code located inside the cover of the box for this year's VitalBook software.
Some people have received occasional errors while attempting to download books, but this appears to be due to transient connectivity issues, and is typically remedied by a healthy dose of "try again later".
Dell Updates
Dell's Support webpage has a fair number of software and driver updates for the Dell machines, many of which provide useful performance enhancements and bugfixes.
Your computer's Service Tag number can be very helpful in locating downloads and updates specific for your hardware, and this can be found on a sticker on the bottom of your laptop.
If you can manage to navigate from
Dell.com through their Support site to a list of downloads for your computer, I would recommend at least the FlashBIOS Update, Mobile Chipset Drivers, SpeedStep Fix, Radeon 9000 Graphics Driver, and SigmaTel Audio Driver. Alternatively, I have copies of these updates that I can simply give you or send to you. Just let me know.
Infinitely indebted to those who would suffer the insufferable.
