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June 3, 2005
...Remote Desktop
Today's vignette puts the spotlight on Remote Desktop. This cool little program is oft-overlooked, but I hope to change all that. Please read the Q and A
QUESTION: So what's so cool about Remote Desktop?
ANSWER: This just happens to be all that, the chips, and some really good dip.
QUESTION: ?? You didn't really say anything.
ANSWER: Oh, sorry. I got carried away. You see Remote Desktop allows one to sit at one computer and control another computer, like your one at work. You can be in your house and pretend you're at work. What a way to spend an evening!
QUESTION: Wait, you mean anyone can just control my computer - that's horrible.
ANSWER: No, "Speed 2" was horrible, but I see your point...come to think of it the original "Speed" was fairly rotten too. Have you ever looked at the bus jumping scene? They would really have needed a ramp for that to have worked.
QUESTION: Who cares about some dumb movie! Who can control my computer?
ANSWER: Right. Anyone with local administrative privileges are automatically added to the Remote Desktop Users group. Most WOU users are local admins, though some are not. This for most WOU machines, just you and the UCS techs.
QUESTION: Why wouldn't I be and Admin and how do I know?
ANSWER: I'll answer those in reverse order. To determine if you are try this simple test. On your XP machine, double click the clock in the menu bar. If you can change the time, you have admin privileges. If not, you don't.
QUESTION: You said XP machine, what if I have Windows 98?
ANSWER: HA, you're a riot! ...oh, you were serious? Well, Windows 98 is so antiquated (and insecure) that it actually doesn't have any kind of security. If you are on the computer, you can do anything. Also, Remote Desktop is for our XP users only. You '98 folks won't be cursed much longer. You see, we'll be mograting all departments in due course and we won't allow those stinky '98 machines on our new domain. Someone brought up that the '98 folks may still wish to use a computer now and then, so it'll be replaced with a new machine.
QUESTION: And why wouldn't I already be an Admin?
ANSWER: That's actually a prickly question. You see, if a user is not able to make serious system-wide changes, then WOU machines stay in working order a lot longer. They're less susceptible to virus attacks, spyware, monkeying and fiddling. Furthermore, we have some folks on campus that don't realize that buying one copy of a program does not entitle you to install it willy-nilly on whatever computers you'd like. That actually is a violation of law. A law with big teeth. WOU could incur some very heavy fines if we were ever audited. Long story short, I lost this battle so now everyone can be an admin. If you find you're not, please call the Service Request Line at 88925 to get that changed.
QUESTION: Okay, so now I'm an Admin, what's next?
ANSWER: You need to know your IP.
QUESTION: No, I just went.
ANSWER: No, no. Your IP address for the machine you wish to control. Kinda like the address for your house. You can find out your IP address any number of ways. The simplest is to go to http://www.whatismyip.com. It'll display a number starting with 140.211. Take note of that.
QUESTION: So noted...what's next?
ANSWER: Go to your controlling machine. To keep this Q and A short-ish we're just going to cover the scenario of your controlling machine being an XP computer. Go to the "Start" menu. Go to the following:
"All Programs" -> "Accessories" -> "Communications" -> "Remote Desktop Connection"
Where it says computer, type the IP address you got earlier. I'll talk about the setting within Remote Desktop at a later time. My Pizza just got out of the oven; now it needs to get in my belly.
Posted by crowej at 10:12 PM | Comments (5)
June 2, 2005
We're gonna do what?!!??!
We'll be moving all users to Communications Express, the new email system. Appropriately enough, the new link for this is:http://www.wou.edu/newmail. Once we get all of WOU migrated, then we'll point /wouemail to this location as well. My personal opinion is that this change is pretty decent. The new calendar (which is in the same web page) simply rocks. The email client is faster. Having migrated a number of users to this new email I can say that the address book still stinks. However...
UCS Supports Outlook
As stated in Bill's Blog UCS is now supporting Microsoft Outlook 2003 in addition to Communications Express. We feel that the latest Outlook offering from Microsoft is mature enough to be secure. It also snych super-well with the web Communications Express. It is because of very poor security track records that we remain unable to support prior iterations of Outlook. If you or your department wish to use this program and do not have Office 2003, then you will need to buy a license (approx $50). Once we have the PC side settled down, I'll dink around with a Mac client (entourage).
It is my sincere hope that these two applications will offer users the flexibility to stretch their digital wings.
Outlook synchs with the Communications Express app via a conduit (think plug-in like software). Outlook actually receives and writes to the web-based app. There are several advantages for WOU and UCS to this.
1. Access to the same data whether on campus or on the road.
2. Easy to set up Palms, Pocket PC's etc. LaRon Tolley, until today, was never able to get his PocketPC to synch to the calendar. It now works and took one of my student workers 15 minutes to get fully functional. This student, Myron Hoeckle, had never set up a PIM device to synch to Outlook before.
3. Allows for user flexibility and choice (Some may say that two choices isn't much of a choice...we're kind of like the American political system. No matter which app you use, you get the same message).
4. Allows low-end users the opportunity to use more features in an easy-to-see GUI.
Posted by crowej at 10:14 PM | Comments (3)
Migration...so what's it to ya?
You've heard that you are going to be migrated. If you're reading this, presumably you'd like more information. As a sufferer of short attention spans, I'll keep this in chunklets.
Otherwise, the text should focus more on what you, the user, will notice as changes to what you currently have.
The new domain, which is called MASH, is a Windows 2003 Active Directory Domain. There are currently two Domain Controllers, hosted on SunFire v20z's
These boxes feature some way cool stuff. Most notably is the support for hardware level RAID (read OS independent). They have Microsoft Windows 2003 Enterprise Server installed. The advent of an Active Directy (or AD) based network for WOU causes big bright smiles...at least for me. I'm able to make enterprise-wide changes on the client machines quickly, in one place. This offers a degree of granular control that we completely lacked.
With the implementation of multiple domain controllers, we'll have much more greater better network redundancy (the prior statement was, in itself, a poor redundancy pun...not a horrible grammar faux pas).
Posted by crowej at 1:25 PM | Comments (0)