Major Upgrade in Our PC Laboratories 
 

Hardware Upgrade

The Computer Centre is upgrading the PC laboratory in Room 103, Run Run Shaw Building with 42 new PC systems. Each new PC is equipped with a Pentium III 667 MHz CPU, 128MB RAM, a 17" colour monitor, a 1.44MB 3.5" floppy drive, a 250MB ZIP drive and a CD-ROM drive.

In addition, 8 PCs in Room 134, Old Library Building will also be replaced.  Among the 8 new PC's,  4 units will have the same configuration as described above while the other 4 systems will have a CD-RW drive instead of the CD-ROM drive. The CD-RW drive allows reading and writing on the compact disk whereas the CD-ROM drive is for reading only.

The communal PC facilities provided in the new academic year by the Computer Centre are summarised as follows:
 
 
Building Room Equipment
Run Run Shaw Building RR-103
  • 4 Pentium-III 450 MHz 128 MB PCs with 17" monitors, 100MB ZIP drives & CD-RW drives
  • 42 Pentium-III 667 MHz 128MB PCs with 17" monitors, 250MB ZIP drives & CD-ROM drives
  • 4 networked laser printers (3 black & white and 1 colour)
Run Run Shaw Building RR-201
  • 25 Pentium-III 450 MHz 128MB PCs with 17" monitors & ZIP drives 
Old Library Building OLB-134
  • 52 Pentium-II 333 MHz 64MB PCs with 17" monitors & CD-ROM drives  (4 with 100MB ZIP drives)
  • 4 Pentium-III 667 MHz 128MB PCs with 17" monitors, 250MB ZIP drives & CD-ROM drives
  • 4 Pentium-III 667 MHz 128MB PCs with 17" monitors, 250MB ZIP drives & CD-RW drives
  • 4 networked laser printers (3 black & white and 1 colour)
Old Library Building OLB-135
  • 30 Pentium-II 333 MHz 64MB PCs with 17" monitors
Knowles Building KB-218
  • 12 Pentium-II 333 MHz 64MB PCs with 17" monitors
Run Run Shaw Building RR-101
  • 21 Pentium-III 450 MHz 128MB PCs with 17" monitors, 100MB ZIP drives & CD-ROM drives

 

Software Upgrade

Major software upgrade is now being carried out in our PC laboratories. Four new software packages will be installed in our PC laboratories:

 The following two software will be upgraded to their latest versions: The software packages installed in our PC laboratories are divided into two program groups, namely the "HKUWIN - Central Network Services" group and the "Computer Centre Software" group. These program groups appear on the desktop metaphor of the screen when the Windows operating system is started up. Details of these program groups are listed as follows:
 

HKUWIN - Central Network Services
 
Program Function
Netscape Communicator 4.73 for web browsing, mail and news, web page editing, etc.
PC-Pine A PC-client e-mail program for sending and reading e-mail, and manipulating mail folders on a host computer. (One icon is set to handle e-mail on HKUSUA, and another icon for e-mail on HKUCC.)
Telnet (can show Chinese) -- SimpTerm SimpTerm is a telnet program for login to a host computer. It can display traditional and simplified Chinese characters.
WS_FTP An FTP program for transferring files between a host and your PC.
eXcursion A program for emulating an X window (a windows environment for Unix workstations) on a PC.

Note: The icon for the Microsoft Internet Explorer v5 browser also appears on the desktop metaphor of the screen.

Computer Centre software
 
Program Function
Adobe Acrobat 4.0 for publishing documents in Portable Document Format (PDF)
Adobe GoLive 4.0 for web authoring and site management
Adobe Illustrator 8.0  for freehand drawing 
Adobe InDesign 1.5 for professional publishing
Adobe LiveMotion 1.0 for producing web graphics and animation
Adobe PageMaker 6.5 Plus for desktop publishing 
Adobe Photoshop 5.5 for creating images and graphics
Acrobat Reader 4.0 for reading PDF (portable document format) files
Chinese CorelDRAW 9 for drawing (design, create and edit graphics with library of graphic images (clip arts)) - installed in Chinese Windows partition
CorelDRAW 8/9 for drawing (design, create and edit graphics with library of graphic images (clip arts)) - installed in English Windows partition
Corel WordPerfect 9 a word processing program.
DreamWeaver 3.0 for web page authoring
EasyZip98 v1.0 for file compression and decompression
Ghostview 2.7 an easy-to-use program for browsing postscript files. It calls Ghostscript to render postscript files.
Ghostscript 5.5 a program to render postscript files.
Java 1.1.8 Development Kit for developing Java 1 applications
Java 2 Development Kit  for developing Java 2 applications
Macromedia Flash 4.0 for creating animated web page
Microsoft FrontPage 2000 for web page authoring 
Microsoft Access 2000 a personal database program - installed in English Windows 98
Microsoft Excel 20000 a spread-sheet program - installed in English Windows 98
Microsoft PowerPoint 2000 a presentation program - installed in English Windows 98
Microsoft Word 2000 a word processing program - installed in English Windows 98
Microsoft Publisher 2000 a desktop publishing program - installed in English Windows 98
Microsoft Access 2000 Chinese Edition a personal database program - installed in Chinese Windows 98
Microsoft Excel 2000 Chinese Edition a spread-sheet program - installed in Chinese Windows 98
Microsoft PowerPoint 2000 Chinese Edition a presentation program - installed in Chinese Windows 98
Microsoft Word 2000 Chinese Edition a word processing program - installed in Chinese Windows 98
Microsoft Access 97 a personal database program - installed in Chinese/English Windows 95
Microsoft Excel 97 a spread-sheet program - installed in Chinese/English Windows 95
Microsoft PowerPoint 97 a presentation program - installed in Chinese/English Windows 95
Microsoft Word 97 a word processing program - installed in Chinese/English Windows 95
Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Programming environment for Visual Basic
Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 Programming environment for Visual C++ 
Microsoft Visual FoxPro 6.0 Programming environment for Visual FoxPro
Microsoft Visual InterDev 6.0 Programming environment for web-based applications
Microsoft Visual J++ 6.0 Programming environment for Java
Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Chinese Edition Programming environment for Visual Basic - installed in Chinese Windows partition
Microsoft Visual FoxPro 6.0 Chinese Edition Programming environment for Visual FoxPro - installed in Chinese Windows partition
Norton AntiVirus 7.01 a virus scanning program
Paint Shop Pro 6.02 for graphical drawing
RealPlayer G2 to play back streaming RealAudio and RealVideo files.
SPSS 10.0 a statistical package.
SAS 8.0 a statistical package.

 

Upgrade of Colour Printers

We have also planned to replace the 2 colour printers in Room 103, Run Run Shaw Building and Room 134, Old Library Building with 2 new HP Color LaserJet 8550N printers. The LaserJet 8550N printer comes with a 200MHz microprocessor and 64MB RAM. It supports a high printing quality of 600 dpi resolution and can print at a speed of 24 pages per minute for black and white A4 documents and 6 pages per minute for colour A4 documents.

Like the service provided by the existing laser-printers in our PC laboratories, these 2 new printers will operate in a self-service mode. Users should collect their own printouts as soon as they are available. All uncollected printouts will be removed.

Should you have any questions regarding the PC laboratories, please contact the undersigned.

Vitus Lam
Tel: 2859 2484
E-mail: lsw@cc.hku.hk


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