Department of Economics, Washington University – Computing Support information, September 2007

1. Hardware

1.1 Computers

Washington University is on three-to-five year cycle: you can expect your computer to be replaced every three to five years. Typically, the school of Arts and Sciences gives us a budget to finance the purchase of computers that need to be substituted. It is possible for faculty members to increase that budget using individual research funds, but typically Florin Petrescu, the computing support manager for the department, has been able to provide strong computer packages for that price thanks to bulk purchases. A&S Computing supports both PCs and Macs, so faculty can choose.

New faculty members receive a new computer when they arrive. The budgeting for those purchases is handled differently than the budgeting for replacements.

1.2 Printing

All members of the department have a printer in their office. In addition, there are two online printing services. One is provided by the printer in the computer lab in Eliot 311. (Let Florin know if the printer in the lab is not visible from your computer.) The other is provided by the new copier in Eliot 205. The copier is not set up at the moment, but will be set up soon.

There is also a scanner in the lab, which can be used by all members of the department. You can request a key to the computer lab from Karen.

In general, as I have learned from experience, it is useful to have a key to the lab in case of failure of one’s personal office equipment.

Note: A&S Computing has plans to start offering, in about six months, loaner laptops to faculty with computers out of commission.

1.3 Hardware for visitors

There are a few “spare” computers in the department that can be assigned to visitors (here I mean long to medium term visitors). Typically, there are no spare printers. As a general rule, no new equipment is provided by Arts and Sciences Computing for visitors.

However, A&S Computing does provide spare computers to visitors as well, in case there are no computers available in the department. The point is that as soon as it is known that a future visitor will need a computer, Florin should be informed so that a plan can be made.

Visitors who can obtain a university id can also get an email account, and will be able to log on the wireless connection on campus (the letter of the sponsor institution or faculty must be sent to Karen so that she can make a request or an appointment with Human Resources).

For short-term visitors, such as seminar speakers, there is a guest account to log on the wireless network with a personal laptop. The user name and password are available from Karen, Sonya, and Carissa.

1.4 Projectors

The department owns a projector and a laptop that can be used in rooms where a wall-mounted projector and a computer are not available. This issue will become irrelevant in the new building, where all relevant rooms will have projectors, but it remains important this year: if you need the projector you should tell Jessica. She keeps track of the projector’s schedule. This is important because sometimes the projector will be needed in two places at the same time. In these cases Florin will obtain another projector, but he needs sufficient time to request one from A&S Computing, the Teaching Center or borrow one from another department or center.

(A&S Computing offers Audio Visual Event Services as well, see http://artsci.wustl.edu/~aves.)

2. Software

Software is available with several types of licenses. First, recall the definition of a department computer: this is a computer purchased through Washington University. If you have a laptop that you use at home and for travel, but was purchased through Washington University, then it is a department computer. A home computer is one purchased individually.[1]

The department subscribes to many program licenses that are available to department computers. In some cases, the computer must be on the econ subnet for the program to run. That is, the license is network bound. The current list of programs available is[2]

- ArcGis (Geographic Information System, this is in fact a University wide subscription)

- Eviews (network bound)

- Gauss (network bound)

- Limdep

- Mathematica (network bound)

- Matlab (network bound)

- McAfee Virus Scan (also available for home computers to faculty)

- Microsoft Office (also available for home computers to faculty)

- PCTex

- SAS (network bound)

- Integrity desktop firewall (also available for free on home computers as Zone Labs firewall)

There are some additional computer programs that are available in the computer lab but for which the department does not have licenses for use on other computers. These are:

- Scientific Workplace

- Stata

Two more observations are relevant about the department’s subscriptions: first, WinEdt, a popular and cheap text editor, is available on a limited basis. Second, a limited number of Mathematica licenses is available for home use. This means that Mathematica can be installed on a limited number of home computers, and these computers do not have to be on the department subnet for Mathematica to run.

If a program is not listed above, then you have to purchase it with your own funds. One important piece of information is that the university has access to software at a discount, and this is available to the WashU community. A list of available programs can be seen at

http://sl.wustl.edu/catalog/.

The WashU Bookstore also carries software. In the case of some Mac software, the Bookstore’s price is often considerably below that of Apple’s own online Education Store for WU (the Bookstore’s discount sometimes runs more than 30%).

You have probably noticed that office computers installed by Florin have additional software: these are free applications.

Typically, those who want to purchase software might want to seek advice from Florin.

As a final remark about software, A&S Computing does not support all software packages. However, A&S Computing provides full support for some programs, and the list of software fully supported is located on the web site:

http://artsci.wustl.edu/ASCC/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=128&Itemid=0

This list will be different for Social Sciences Computing. Ideally, in the new building, we will have someone available for general statistical package and data help.

3. Access to the server

All computers in the lab and all PCs in the offices have a “G drive.” The G drive provides individual access to the server, and can be used to store personal documents. The space currently available per person is of the order of 1-2 GB. (At the moment, this statement does not apply to Macs, on which the G drive is not visible.)

The space available per individual user will increase in the new building. Moreover, there will be an automatic daily back-up service for files in the My Documents folder (for Windows XP; Documents for Vista; and something equivalent is likely to be available for Macs). This is important: remember that the My Documents folder will have this special status. If you save your work in a different directory it will not be automatically backed up. (For more about back-ups see section 5 below.)

4. Remote Access

The knowledge base at

http://artsci.wustl.edu/ASCC/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=47&Itemid=70

contains instructions on how to access the school mail service, set up mail in various programs, and connect to school via modem. (The knowledge base contains a lot more of course; it is the knowledge base after all....)

Systematic remote access to the G drive will be available in the new building. In particular, VPN access, through which a secure tunnel is created between a remote computer and your office computer, will be available.

At the moment, if you want access to your documents remotely, you should put them on your web page. Section 6 below provides the addresses on the Washington University Web page where you can find instructions on how to ftp files and make your web page (or parts of it) password protected.

5. Back-ups

For PCs, Florin creates a back-up of each faculty and staff office computer a couple of times a year. So far, this rule has not applied to Macs as the few faculty members using them have adopted other solutions. This is likely to change with more Mac users.

Keep in mind that this is the only support available for back-ups at the moment (with the exception of what I mentioned in section 3 for the plan for back-ups in the new building).

To address this issue (over the years I have had seven hard drive crashes) I have purchased an external hard drive to back up my files regularly. Free synchronization and back-up software is easily available. I highly recommend this solution: it is very cheap and time efficient.

6. Web Pages

The university provides server space for individual web pages. The default address for your page is http://artsci.wustl.edu/~userid. In addition, requests for other accounts, for example for a course webpage, can be made online from the knowledge base at:

http://artsci.wustl.edu/ASCC/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=161&Itemid=117

In the same knowledge base you can find instructions to ftp files to your public directory on the university server, which is the public_html folder. If you wish to request a web account for a course page, you can do it directly or ask the TA to do it on your behalf. In the latter case, the TA will have to provide the faculty member’s information. In general, remember that for online teaching resources the school is converging to Telesis, a program available to the Washington University community online, so there might be advantages to using Telesis, at least eventually.

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[1] Typically, to get university software installed on your home computer you have to bring the computer to Florin.

[2] Acrobat Professional is purchased for every new hire upon request.