Minutes of last meeting

The minutes of the meeting held on 23^rd March 2004 were approved.

Matters arising

Capital Expenditure Plans for 2003 - 2004

JSB reported on Capital Expenditure Plans.  ECAM had given an extra £20,000 but that would not be enough to pay for all priority 5 items.

Mandy Strahan had agreed to pay for furniture and the moving of the projector for M4.3. 

It had been agreed that t his committee will take over the purchasing of lab furniture in future.

24/7 Support for Students learning

The Committee discussed the issue of out of hours support for students.

Weekdays 9am to 5pm is not good enough, especially for Distance Learning students who have no other support available. Even students on campus in Anglesea don't have technical support in evenings.

SB reported that from the Student Survey that local students were happy with lab room opening hours. If the hours were to be extended, the survey suggested extra opening hours on a Saturday and Sunday morning.

However, they were unhappy with the Library as it should be open longer.

There is a lack of information for the Students to show them which buildings are open and when.

Study need to be done to assess what is required – count heads on an hourly basis to see the labs use. Possible consolidation.

Linux Support Strategy

JD reported that Red Hat support for their Version 9 finishes at the end of May.  The two main options are to adopt Red Hat Enterprise Server or one of SUSE's support offerings.

Prices: Red Hat - £7,500 will support 1 server and 50 workstations + 5 licences to be purchased at £200 a time.  SUSE is cheaper, full package £1,300 6 servers + 20 workstations.

Fedora is a spin off from Red Hat. It is free, however it has no regular updates.

There is a possibility that support for Oracle will only be available with Red Hat.

It was agreed to wait and see what other sections of the University recommended.

It was noted that the prices quoted were not unreasonable for the CAM equipment budget to support.

Computing DLE

This item will come up at the Faculty IT Committee meeting on Wednesday 26^th May.

JB has been asked by Roger Beresford to summarise what has been done by CAM as a committee.

British Computer Society accreditation visit

RT reported  that BCS will be coming to accredit new courses on 15^th November 2004.  Prior to the visit RT needs help with information about IT facilities. SB volunteered to assist in providing them.

It was suggested that the information be posted on the web for BCS and others to see.

Any other business

Perception server

AW had concerns over the Perception server – there is no support.  ISO cannot support it as it is not part of their work plan - it needs to become a proper funded project.

Faculty web server

MM raised concerns about who was managing the Faculty web server in Mark Ferguson's absence.

Special needs computers

Date of next meeting

To be fixed. Start of Autumn Term.