IB: InfoBulletin

1. Training - keeping your users Happy

What is it ?
Everyone in an organisation needs career development. It's easy to underestimate the degree to which factors like boredom and lack of new learning play in causing employees to look elsewhere.
Users can find it frustrating having to use computers and applications as part of their everyday work when they find that getting to grips with those everyday tools is a less than satisfying experience. Training everyone cuts down the frustration and makes them feel cared for, but doesn't have to be expensive.

How to make it happen
The trick is to be diverse in the approach. Don't just stick to one method - people learn best in different ways. You should be aiming at least to get everyone up to a base level, volunteers included. Things like printing a headed document, constructing a simple spreadsheet, sending an email to a distribution list then become a 'common language', as do the terms within that language, eg font, cell and header respectively.

• Local experts
  Call them what you like - experts, power users, rangers. Setting up your own group of specialist users is a powerful way of disseminating IT knowledge that your organisation already owns.
  Every person should be considered an 'IT expert' on something as well as a learner on other subjects; start by publishing a list of staff who are willing to be asked about tools they know well, eg word processing, spreadsheets, databases, Web searching, printing on labels, finding documents.
  Get your 'new' local experts to teach people on-the-fly, say a 10-minute tutorial. Learners are at their most eager when they have a problem to solve - take advantage of that. In addition, a half-hour tutorial for about 4 people could be arranged more formally, for instance gathered around a couple of unused PCs.
  If you're not teaching someone at least once a week, you're not capitalising on your organisation's built-in experience.

  Pros and Cons
  Encourages people to talk to each other. Enhances equality of 'IT status' among all staff. You have already taught leavers how to handover to newcomers. 'Lost' staff time in tutorials doesn't show up in the accounts (may be good or bad) but efficient working should do. Informal training like this may not be considered as 'worthy' by some staff, ie you can't put it on a CV.

• IT noticeboard or public folder
  Set up an internally accessible IT noticeboard or public folder and encourage your experts to post up tips and replies to the common queries they answer via email. If these are tied in with tutorials, the learners can refer back to the IT notices in their own time and the experts need virtually no preparation time for longer tutorials.

  Pros and Cons
  This common information is fresh, relevant and, most importantly, specific to your organisation. People can learn at their own speed. Excellent for frequently asked questions (FAQs) - the learner 'solves' the problem for her/himself.

• Formal training
  Get a company to come and train you either in-house (convenient) or outside (a nice break from the office). Professional trainers know their subject well and can fill in the gaps left by your local experts.

  Pros and Cons
  It's easy - you just hand the whole thing over to another company. It saves money (accounts people will love this) in a measurable fashion: if a user saves one hour's time per week, the payback time is well inside 6 months at average worker rates - amazing value when compared to buying new equipment. Chances are, users will learn a whole set of new skills as well, making the boring jobs more efficient (eg transferring data between applications) as well making new jobs possible (eg layout). You actually make a visible cash layout; however some people feel better if they can actually 'see' money being spent on their personal development.

2. Saving and retrieving draft emails

Don't lose that message !
If you're still leaving half-written emails to chance when you're suddenly called away to meetings, to help shift boxes or to a spontaneous ice-cream break, you should be aware of the Save and Retrieve options that most email clients offer. These options allow you to save an email message as a draft that you can complete later.

Benefits

• Keep your train of thought - continue writing your email where you left off
• Compose long emails in chunks - useful if you have to gather data at the same time
• Recover email compositions even if your PC crashes

3. Desktop and server systems - the next 4 years

Server operating systems
By around 2005, the majority of the market share (about 80%) is likely to be split three ways between Unix, Linux and Windows 2000, according to industry analysts Gartner. The general purpose multiprocessing systems will probably run Linux or Windows while big number-crunching or mission-critical systems run on Unix.
Novell users can continue safely with NetWare until 2004. They should only consider a move to Windows 2000 server if they are going to depend on Microsoft's Exchange mail server or want to use Active Directory services. NetWare 6.0 (due for release in 2001) will compete with the recently released Windows 2000 Datacenter Server. New 6.0 features will be repackaged as enhancements to NetWare 5.x, which will continue to be developed.

Desktop operating systems
Windows 95 won't be cost effective by the end of 2003 in that end users will start to see major problems with it. Windows 95 should be removed from your network and effectively made obsolete by systems administrators. Likewise with Windows 98 and Windows NT workstation by 2004, which should all be replaced with contemporary operating systems.

Office applications
Gartners recommend that users of Microsoft's Office 97 should 'skip' an upgrade to Office 2000 and instead consider the new Office XP (originally labelled Office 10). Corel are launch WordPerfect Office 2002 in May 2001.

Co-Operative Systems Office overview
We are not enthused by how quickly Office XP has followed on from Office 2000 - it takes time for all our staff, clients and the technical support people at Microsoft to get up to speed on a new product. Ideally a major upgrade no sooner than every 3 years (eg Office 97 to Office 2000) is best.
In practice, the release of Office XP creates a dilemma for IT managers and potentially extra support complexity all round. Many sites, especially larger ones, already have a mix of Office 2000 and Office 97 users. While file compatibility between the two suites is good, support staff now have to remember the ins and outs of two office suites instead of one, as do many staff who use multiple PCs. Increasing this range of suites to three, with the introduction of XP, is not really going to help matters. The key proposed benefits of Office XP are better "team-ware" and better links to applications and to web-based data.
Recommendations: Assess Office XP and your urgency of deployment. If you already have Office 2000, it may be best to continue to deploy that. It's a truism that in IT there is always something better just around the corner. We would normally recommend a wait of 6 months before adopting any new MS product - unless you like being a pioneer. Quite often first releases are 'buggy'; having to re-install Office on all your PCs three months later is not fun and very costly in labour. So we will likely be recommending Office XP rather than Office 2000 in January 2002.

Contacts
http://www.gartner.com

For an Office XP interactive demo go to :
http://microsoft.com/office/xp/demo.htm. (You'll need the Flash player plug-in)
or alternatively ask us for a free copy of the Microsoft Office XP auto-demo CD by mailing us here.
More details on-line :
http://microsoft.com/uk/office/default.asp

WordPerfect Office 2002 http://corel.com

4. Check your email from a Web browser with Mail2Web

What is it ?
Possibly the most useful email utility on the Web, Mail2Web allows you to check your email from anywhere via a Web browser.
You just type in your dial-up username and password on the front page and a simple logical screen appears showing clickable links for reading your awaiting messages, deleting them selectively or creating a new message.
A secure login option is also provided to encrypt your password rather than sending over the Internet 'in the clear'.
Mail2Web doesn't necessarily need to know the POP3 mailserver at your ISP since it tries to 'guess', but an Advanced Login window provides a place for you to define the POP3 address if you need to.

Benefits

• Preview incoming messages just using a browser or while you're away
• Remove large emails which block your queue without having to download them
• Check mail flow through your account
• Delete suspect virus-bearing messages before they reach your mailserver
• No registration required

5. Screen savers crunch numbers while you are idle

What are they ?
Probably the biggest computing projects in the world and possibly the future direction for similar projects.
Two examples - SETI@home and Intel-United Devices Cancer Research Project - are described below.

How it works
You download a free screensaver which gets to work crunching numbers while your computer is idle. When it's finished processing one block, the screensaver/application connects to the Internet for a few minutes, delivers the results and fetches another block. Millions of computers take part - a truly massive distributed computing project.

Actually the screensaver part is just the 'pretty face' hiding a clever application - the part that does the number-crunching. If your computer has a reasonable amount of memory (more than 64MB), you can leave the application running all the time in which case it uses the 'dead space' when your processor and other applications aren't doing anything. Obviously, it all stops when the computer is shut down.

Benefits
... are largely altruistic, in that they benefit humankind rather than you personally in any direct way. However it's a fun way of promoting scientific projects.
You get your own account which accrues points depending on much data you have processed. And points - for the larger number-crunching accounts - mean prizes! Your personal account can be run on several computers on which you have installed the screensaver software, so collecting points into your account happens faster.

It's a good deal cheaper than supercomputing: SETI's most powerful supercomputer runs at 12 TeraFLOPS (floating point operations) costing US$110 million. The distributed power of the SETI@home project currently runs at about 15 TeraFLOPs (the result of all those combined PCs, Macs, Sparc stations, etc out there) and has cost US$500K so far - 220 times cheaper!

Drawbacks
These number-cruncher applications can use a lot of memory while they are running, which would cause disc swapping on older computers (eg old Pentiums). To avoid impacting on your normal work, PC and Mac default modes are set as screensaver only.

The Projects

• Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI@home)

  Starting from an idea in 1994 and now probably the largest combined computing project in existence, SETI is a scientific effort aiming to determine if there is intelligent life out in the universe by looking for another civilization that might be transmitting radio signals. Help SETI by analysing data specially captured by the world's largest radio telescope.

  Contact:

  http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/

  Application download:

  794KBytes

  Data block download:

  350KBytes

  Typical 56K modem connect time:

  1.7 minutes

  Application/screensaver features:

  Impressive display showing progress and data analysis of 'signals from outer space'. Panels show 4 live graphics displays of Gaussian curve-fitting, chirping, fast fourier transforms and doppler drift rates. Excellent Web site explains all the terms and objectives of the project.

  Version:

  3.03

  Platforms available:

  Windows (95/98/2000/NT), Macintosh, UNIX, WinNT, OS/2, BeOS, Mac OS X Server, OpenVMS

• Intel-United Devices Cancer Research Project

  A relative newcomer, the NFCR Centre for Drug Discovery in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Oxford are working to find a cure for cancer and have teamed up with United Devices to produce their "UD Agent".

  Contact:

  http://members.ud.com/vypc/

  Application download:

  1.8MBytes

  Data block download:

  1.8MBytes

  Typical 56K modem connect time:

  3.8 minutes

  Application/screensaver features:

  Bar graph shows percentage of analysis while graphic display shows proteins/molecules being analysed, eg superoxide_dismutase. Snooze mode can be preset for a time period, default 5 minutes. Main page also shows performance indicator, comparing your PC's processor, disc and network card with a high end desktop PC. Bar graph updates jerkily at present jumping from 2% to 5% to 30% giving a patchy indication of progress. Hopefully to be fixed in later versions.

  Version:

  1.03c

  Platforms available:

  Windows (95/98/2000/NT)

  Other projects in the pipeline are "Saving History" - digitising decades of paper-based information for online use (third quarter of 2001), and "Genetic Research" - finding new treatments and cures for disease by understanding DNA.

6. For profit - tell us your great idea

7. Comic Pants Update

A £10 voucher for Marks and Spencer's pants goes to Latel Melton of the WI, who correctly identified three pants wearers on our Comic Relief Webcam page, although this was with a little help from a Co-Op engineer who was visiting her site at the time.

Maybe that's cheating - but it did show initiative!
Well done, Latel.

Philip Anthony