All, Please find below some information from ICT which I hope you will find useful. The following jump links will help you navigate to areas of specific interest: * PC Renewals * Security * PrintService * AV Provision * Home Directories and Roaming Profiles * Office 365 for Students PC Renewals: Desktops The new desktop specification is the HP Elite 800 G1 including ... * 4th generation (Haswell) Intel Core i7 processor * 8GB RAM * 500GB HDD * Intel on-board 4400 graphics chipset Laptops New laptops are about to be released on the portal - these replace the Elitebook 25xx, 27xx and 8xxx units which are all being set to "End of Life" as of mid-November due to parts constraints. The new laptop units are all HP Elitebook 8x0 G1 series with the middle digit identifying the screen size .. * 820 G1 = 12.5" laptop (direct replacement to the Elitebook 2570p) * 840 G1 = 14" laptop (direct replacement to the Elitebook 8470p) * 850 G1 = 15.6" laptop (direct replacement to the Elitebook 8570p) All the new units follow HP's improved design with thinner, lighter bodies, new surface coatings and Intel 4th generation (Haswell) processors. All units qualify under the Intel Ultrabook specifications. The College standard machines will all have 8GB RAM, Core i5 processor and SSD although options remain to vary all the key specifications to suit. All the 8x0 series, including the currently available Elitebook Revolve 810 G1 (which replaced the Elitebook 2760p tablet) use a common docking solution. Workstations For those with greater processing demands from mobile units the new HP Mobile Workstations are also now coming on-stream - the 15" and 17" Zbook units will be available this week on the Imperial College HP portal and the new 14" Zbook will follow when it is released in late November. These units have high end processors and a variety of graphics cards for high end visual demands. The Zbook 15 and Zbook 17 have a range of NVidia graphics cards while the Zbook 14 will have a choice of on-board Intel or AMD graphics. HP have also updated the Personal Desktop ranges (Z420, Z620 and Z820) to include the newest multicore processors - the Z820 is now available with up to 24 physical compute cores and 1TB of RAM (this will be extendable to 2TB when the new RAM chips become available in Q1 2014). General Information Pricing remains VERY competitive across the HP Desktop, Laptop and Workstation range. I would also remind all staff that College Purchasing will expect that almost all computing needs for desktops, laptops and workstations to be met by the HP range. If you intend to purchase outside of the HP agreement then you will need to ensure that any laptop comes with a TPM chip (for secure encryption of the data drive - a requirement for all College owned laptops) and the ability to escrow the encryption key in Active Directory (so that ICT can provide support for forgotten PINs, etc). There is also a requirement for the units purchased to carry a 3 year onsite warranty just like the HP units. Security All new College owned laptops should be secured using drive encryption. ICT provide this facility as part of the standard build process for HP machines and will also carry out this on other non-HP equipment wherever possible as part of the automated software build processes. The key reasons for this increased security is to protect College from accidental data leakage due to theft or other loss. College must be able to show that all reasonable precautions have been undertaken to prevent the access to data on unsecured drives. Failure to show this could lead to a very large (tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds) fines imposed by the Data Commissioner. Mac laptops will also be secured using drive encryption from the start of January 2014. Staff are advised to utilise tools such as "BitLocker to go" on Windows machines or other suitable drive encryption software for any USB / portable media which are carried and subject to potential loss. Failure to encrypt the data on such devices could again lead to very large fines being imposed and College imposing sanctions on the guilty party. PrintService The PrintService contract has been retendered and the contract awarded to the incumbent supplier (DTP) but on much more favourable terms for College. DTP are in the process or replacing the oldest units and will contact the nominated people as necessary regarding upgrade units. DTP can also now supply high volume Samsung printer units as part of the new contract. Audio-visual Provision The new round of renewal work on lecture theatre AV equipment has commenced this summer with LT1 in Blackett being one of the main areas upgraded. We'd welcome any comments regarding the new provision as we continue to strive to provide AV facilities which meet or exceed the expectations of both staff and students. All new areas will be enabled for Panopto lecture recording so that lectures can be recorded and made available for subject review by the students, etc. Home Directories and Roaming Profiles As part of ICT's commitment to functional and well maintained infrastructure, the storage presented to the NAS servers, and which ultimately provides home directory space for all College users, is reaching the end of its warranty. As such ICT will soon be undertaking a replacement of the storage presentation, bringing online new storage, copying the data from the current storage onto the new units and then presenting the new units to the NAS servers while at the same time decommissioning the old storage units. This work will require an outage to all Home directories and roaming profile data. Currently there is no agreed date for this, but we expect it to be carried out at a time which should create the least inconvenience to all our users, both staff and students. Further details and timings will be circulated when they are available. Office 365 for Students ICT is currently looking at the potential for implementing Office 365 for students and utilising the recently announced Office Advantage for students. This will give students the ability to download up to five copies of office for personal machines (including mobile devices such as iPads, iPhones, Android tablets and Android phones). The version is the full featured Office Professional Plus (the same version that staff get on College builds). If anyone has any comments or thoughts on this proposal then please send them to me (a.mannall@imperial.ac.uk<mailto:a.mannall@imperial.ac.uk>). As always, if anyone has any other matters that they wish to raise then please contact me either by email or by phone (ext 57974). Regards Adrian. -----Original Message----- From: physics-departmental-computing-bounces@imperial.ac.uk [mailto:physics-departmental-computing-bounces@imperial.ac.uk] On Behalf Of David Colling Sent: 06 November 2013 19:07 To: physics-departmental-computing Subject: [Physics-Departmental-Computing] Meeting tomorrow Dear All, Just a reminder that we have a meeting tomorrow. The time and location are 12;30 in room 532. I will circulate an agenda tomorrow morning. However, one item that might be worth considering in advance are items to be discussed between the HoD and ICT in a forthcoming meeting. the rest of the items on tomorrow's agenda will have no surprises. Best, david _______________________________________________ Physics-Departmental-Computing mailing list Physics-Departmental-Computing@imperial.ac.uk<mailto:Physics-Departmental-Computing@imperial.ac.uk> https://mailman.ic.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/physics-departmental-computing