Introduction

It is the beginning of another new academic year. On behalf of the Computer Centre, I would like to give a warm welcome to all new staff and students to the campus and introduce to them our Centre's wide range of computer facilities and IT services. To our old users, I would also like to update them on the new developments on our hardware, software and services in the last few months.

The Computer Centre provides comprehensive computer facilities and network services to meet the different IT (information technology) needs of teaching, learning, research and administration in the University. It is important during your association with the University to acquaint yourself with the numerous IT services available on campus.

Location

The headquarters of the Computer Centre is located on the first and second floors of the Run Run Shaw Building. The other major site is located on the first floor of the Old Library Building. Students and staff can access the numerous PC's available in the PC laboratories in these two sites, and use our help desk and laser printing services. We also have faculty-based PC laboratories set up in various buildings, including Knowles Building, Main Building, KK Leung Building, Runme Shaw Building, Composite Building, Chong Yuet Ming Building and buildings in the Medical campus, the Dental campus and the Student Amenities Centres.

Central IT Services

All student, faculty and staff members of the University are eligible for free e-mail services and internet access. Computer accounts for first-year undergraduate students are automatically created using their student numbers as account names when they enter the University. Other students, including postgraduate students, and new staff members can apply for an account on our host computer system online via the Intranet web. If you have difficulties in doing this yourself, then go to the Help Desk located at Room 104, Run Run Shaw Building and ask for assistance.

PC Facilities

The Computer Centre provides a large number of PCs (Pentium IIs and IIIs) distributed in various locations across campus for use by all staff and students. To access the PCs, you must have an account on our HKUSUA computer, which is the host system for all students. For staff members whose accounts are on the HKUCC computer and who need to use the PCs in the laboratories, you can always create an account on the HKUSUA computer for yourself. A large variety of popular PC software is installed in the various PC laboratories to meet the different needs of our students. Laser printing service is available on a chargeable basis. All the PC's in the student laboratories are connected to the HKU Campus Network. From the staff offices, access to the network is possible via the departmental LAN file server from PCs connected to the campus network.

The central PC laboratories and multimedia rooms can be booked by teachers for instructional purposes. These laboratories provide network points for teachers to connect their PCs or notebook computers to the network and overhead projection facilities are available. Booking should be made two weeks in advance through the Centre's General Office.

Network Services

Our campus network had a major upgrade as part of the Digital University Initiative last year. We now have a sophisticated high-speed ATM-based network backbone supporting our campus network with over 14,000 network points installed around the campus and in the student residences. ATM WAN links from the University's main campus are set up to provide high-speed network access to the remote campuses in the Queen Mary Hospital area and in the the Prince Philip Dental Hospital compound.

Starting from the last academic year, our first-year undergraduate students have benefited from a student notebook computer programme set up by the University in conjunction with IBM. To provide ubiquitous access for the notebook computers, 4000 ACEnet (Access-Everywhere-Network) network points have been installed throughout the campus so that students can connect to the campus network anywhere on campus. Students residing in halls also have direct access to the campus network from their own bedrooms. All the nine student residential halls provide one network access point for each student through the HKU Hallnet and each room is provided with one telephone. To access either the ACEnet or the Hallnet services, staff and students are reminded that they must register their network cards with the Computer Centre on the Staff or Student Intranet.

Dial-up Access to Network

Furthermore, all staff and students can connect to the HKU campus network from their homes using our dial-up service. This service is provided through our PPP network access account and our HKUNAP network access package which can be downloaded from our ftp site. There are now over 856 lines, mostly supporting 56Kbps V.90 modems, which provides 24-hour access to our network from home.

The Help Desk

Our Help Desk is located at the Run Run Shaw Building (Room RR104). It is set up and attended by our staff to assist our users in computer and network problems during office hours. For people who are not in the vicinity of the Computer Centre, you can call the hotline number at 2958-2480. Alternatively, you can direct your enquiries and requests for support electronically at email address ithelp@hku.hk. We respond openly to enquiries put up on the news bulletin board, hku.cc.forum, on a daily basis.

Computer and Network Equipment Maintenance

The Computer Centre provides an in-house maintenance service for PC and network equipment in the University. Our aim is to provide our departments with a cost-effective, convenient and fast-responding hardware maintenance service to all the PC users in the University. If you are interested in our maintenance service, please enquire about our competitive pricing at Telephone 2859-2495 or come to the General Office for details.

We are pleased to announce a reduction in the maintenance charge for PC equipment since the past summer. The price reduction was brought about by the continuous reduction in the price of PC hardware and equipment and we are passing this benefit to our users. This year, the maintenance charge for all PC models have been reduced, with the most significant drop in the Pentium models. We believe that the new pricing is very attractive and will benefit all PC users in the University as a whole.

Central Computer Servers

We are pleased to inform our users that we are in the process of installing a powerful Sun Enterprise 10000 (Sun E-10000) system, intended to replace two old Sun SparcCentre 2000E (SunSC-2000E) systems which have been supporting the University's central academic computing and World-Wide Web services for more than five years.

When the new E-10000 is installed, the four Sun server systems (two SC-2000E's and two E-6000's) for the existing HKUSUA, HKUSUB, HKUSUC and HKUSUD systems will be re-organised. While the two Sun SC-2000E's will be scheduled to retire, the two Sun E-6000's systems will be re-configured to form an upgraded High-Availability system pair (HKUSUC and HKUSUD) for supporting the University's World-Wide Web (HKUWWW) and the central web-caching proxy services.

New Administrative Applications

Our Staff Intranet and our Student Intranet serve to provide an information service which provides our staff and students with personal access to university information and communication resources. The Computer Centre has adopted the web-based system development strategy two years ago. Most client-based administrative systems have been converted to web-based systems for wider and more user-friendly access. The Student Connect system now provides an entirely web-based student administration system whereby students can register and select courses via the Student Intranet. The University Information System provides departments with all the administrative information that they need on the Staff Intranet.

Web-based Course Development

The Computer Centre supports the use of the web technology in the University's teaching, learning, research and administration by maintaining a powerful information server, special multimedia facilities and providing training courses on learning or teaching on the web. We also support personal homepages.

In-line with the Digital University initiative pursued in HKU to produce an effective teaching and learning environment employing Information Technology, the Computer Centre has introduced a web-based teaching and learning tool, namely the WebCT, in late 1997. Since the introduction of this tool, more than 300 courses have been included in WebCT and the total number of visits to online materials and electronic bulletins by teachers and students was close to 1 million.

In order to promote web-based teaching and the sharing of experiences among electronic course providers, the Computer Centre, with the aid from a group of enthusiastic teachers, has published a booklet called "Web-based Course Development using WebCT at the University of Hong Kong". We hope that this booklet will serve as an example to inspire other colleagues in the university for more creative ideas on how they can use I.T. to help them in their teaching. You can contact our office if you are interested in getting a copy for your own reference.

Year 2000 Compliance

The Year 2000 problem, often called the Y2K bug, is a serious problem that has a major impact on all computers or computer-related hardware and software. The Computer Centre has taken the lead to drive our University towards Y2K compliance starting from more than a year ago. It is my pleasure to inform all our users that our University, with the close cooperation and hard work from all the departments, has achieved Year 2000 readiness for all our mission-critical systems on June 30, 1999 as planned.  The number of non-compliant hardware and software systems in departments has been reduced from 6000 to only a handful in the span of about one year and most departments have completed their departmental Y2K rectification work and contingency plans are being drawn up. A University Y2K Contingency Task Force has been formed, chaired by PVC Professor Felix Wu. The Task Force is set up to deal with any possible Y2K problem that may arise at the critical dates of January 1, 2000 and February 29, 2000.

User Training

To provide our users with the necessary skills to use our systems, we offer regular training courses on all of our computer facilities and PC software, email, World Wide Web, news bulletin service and multi-media facilities. Most computer courses offered by the Computer Centre are free of charge, and those that are provided by external course vendors are charged at cost. Users are advised to register early to secure a place. All our courses can be registered over the Intranet. Special training can also be arranged for departments at very reasonable cost.

User Documentation

We maintain comprehensive documentation on our Centre's hardware, software and services in our Handbooks and the "Computer News". The Handbooks are normally updated once a year before the academic year starts. Other updates on the lastest acquisitions of hardware, software and services are published in the Computer News on a bi-monthly basis. All staff and students are notified by email when a new issue of the Computer News is published. You can of course access Computer News from our Centre's webpage.

We also maintain a library of computer periodicals, reference manuals and books, which are available for short-term loan from our General Office located in Room 223, Run Run Shaw Building.

Concluding Remarks

Here, I have summarized the numerous facilities and services supported by the Computer Centre and introduced our new developments in the last few months. It is by no means a complete account of what we offer. Please read other articles in this newsletter and our Centre publications to get all the details.

I hope you will enjoy reading the Computer News and find the information useful. Your feedback and comments are always welcome. It will certainly help us improve on our services and guide us to develop those services that are important to you.

N Ng
Director
Computer Centre
Tel.: 2859 2491
E-mail: nng@cc.hku.hk