I’m a chronic spiller. So when I splashed some cabernet blanc all over my Macbook while uncorking a bottle last Friday night, causing the laptop to go black immediately, I wasn’t too worried. I knew the first lesson: back up your files. Luckily, I’d already learned that one the hard way – a couple of times. The second: Always, always buy the support package. Well, I still didn’t have one of those, but counting backwards, I realized it was still fewer than 90 days since the last time AppleCare replaced my motherboard (for $300), and I was still covered under the repair warranty. The next day I took my Mac back to the store, which promptly shipped it back to the manufacturers. But in the meantime I was stuck: I had to register for classes, write papers, send e-mails and edit the magazine, and computers on the library’s main floor can be hard to come by. So I went looking for the newest, fastest – and generally unoccupied – computers on campus.
In addition to the 50 workstations in the InfoCommons at the library’s entrance, the building has more than 100 other machines. Besides those in the periodical and reference areas, the subterranean Lower Level has three more labs, “dedicated to students to use,” says Bob Davis, associate director of Academic Technologies, a division of NUIT. There is a PC lab, a Mac lab and MediaWorks, “a high-end digital editing sort of space,” with state-of-the-art, double-monitor Macs. “I think sometimes students sort of keep it to themselves,” Davis says of the lab. “It is sort of a hidden gem, I think.” But if these computers fill up during finals, Academic Technologies also operates a lab on North Campus. In the basement of Tech, in Room MG51, there are an additional 25 public computers open to students, and seven more in MG45. Though access and Internet connection are free, printing is not, and costs five cents for a regular single-sided page, eight cents for double-sided and 75 cents for color.
As most students outside of Weinberg might have already discovered, Northwestern’s satellite schools have some of their own labs with free printing, restricted to students taking their classes. But without a netid and password corresponding to that building, the computers are off limits. McCormick has more than 100 spread out in Tech and the Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center, and the school’s Web site can tell you exactly which ones are in use at any given time.
Medill has about 140 PCs between the McCormick Tribune Center and Fisk Hall, according to Douglas Troutman, senior director of information technology and student services at Medill. But some might be removed, Troutman says. “We don’t believe we need all these computers.” he says.
But before you completely give up on your fluky laptop, the university offers several troubleshooting resources. NUIT experts camp out for a few hours at different times each week at the Plaza Café, Lisa’s, Crowe Café, and the Starbucks in Norris to host the Laptop ER. But their help is somewhat limited to Internet connectivity, virus and spyware issues, and NUIT is not equipped to handle hardware problems, says Dennis Sage, associate director of Tech Support Services. “When you take that the next step to hardware it becomes much more difficult because there are many more things that can go wrong.” Sage says that NUIT directs panicked students to HomeTech Computer Solutions, a local support vendor that makes house calls and caters specifically to NU students, or Best Buy’s Geek Squad. But Sage says his recommendations would depend on the student’s brand of computer, warranty or support agreement and technical problem.
To ward off disaster, Sage advises backing up your hard drive, which NUIT does daily. Sage says students might need do so more or less often, depending on their use. “It’s not so much a matter of your operating system but all your term papers and everything else you’ve typed up that may not be recoverable if you don’t have a backup,” he says. Of course, it’s also a good idea to keep liquids away from laptops. “I’m sure there’s been more than one cup of coffee spilled on a laptop over at Norris,” Sage says.
