New Information from ITSU
CLAHS's Information Technology Services Unit (ITSU), provides technical support for faculty and staff in some of the departments in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences. ITSU troubleshoots problems related to operating systems, application software, computer viruses, and peripheral devices. ITSU strives to stay up-to-date on the latest information regarding hardware and software, and then passes that information on to you. Please visit www.itsu.vt.edu for more information.
For the upcoming year changes are taking place within the different Operating Systems.
Vista information
Information Technology Services Unit does not currently offer installation or support services for the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system. The software is currently being evaluated by departmental IT staff, which has found numerous issues between software vendors and Windows Vista. These issues range from limited printer and software support including Hewlett Packard network printers, Adobe Reader 8, Adobe Studio 8 and Norton Antivirus. It is the goal of Information Technology Services Unit to provide computer users the access and functionally of a computer system that utilizes these types of programs and hardware. As Microsoft Windows Vista cannot offer a stable working environment, ITSU will continue to only support Windows 2000 and Windows XP for the PC.
We do not have a date on when we will start supporting and installing Vista.
Parallel Information
Definition of Bootcamp and Parallels
- Parallels is an independent software application designed to emulate non-Mac native operating systems on the Intel processor based Apple Macintosh. This would include any operating system in the Microsoft Windows family such as Windows XP and Windows 2000. Parallels software is designed to run as a full “virtual emulator” of Windows.
- Bootcamp is a software application designed by Apple computer to set up a partition (area on hard disk) that will run a native copy of Windows using Intel processor based Apple hardware. It is different than Parallels in terms of how files are accessed and stored, but offers the same Windows working environment found on Parallels or PC-based Microsoft Windows.
Microsoft Windows Operating Systems Support on Apple Hardware
Currently, Apple Computer Company does not support Windows operating systems on their computers, however, software applications such as Parallels and Bootcamp are now available to end users allowing Microsoft Windows operating systems to operate on Apple hardware.
ITSU will not be supporting parallels, nor the os installed in parallels. We will be offering installation of parallel and Windows XP, if you have the license for them, however, we will not offer support after installation, no file transfer, creation of account, setting up network access, installing software of any kind including the windows security updates.
If you chose to run this software on your computer, you will need to take the precautionary steps to secure it and back it up as ITSU will not offer support on those issues.
