June and July are busy months in ITS. With fewer students on campus in spring and summer, ITS can get into labs and other areas of campus more freely in order to work and deploy equipment.
This year, as all years, we will roll out new computers to labs, and re-image all the lab machines for the software mix to be used in the next year. There are also a number of infrastructure projects, relating to networking, server equipment, and upgrades, that are best done at this time of year. We roll out new staff and faculty machines throughout the year.
Some years ago we initiated a 4 year rotation cycle for all computers on campus. We try to keep all computers on campus under a four year warranty, once they are beyond that age we replace them with new computers. With about 1200 machines on campus, this means purchasing and preparing about 300 machines each year (although this number varies considerably depending on the particular labs to be replaced). In the upcoming 11-12 academic year computers purchased and deployed in the 07-08 academic year will be replaced. So, if your computer is of that vintage, and you do not hear from ITS prior to Christmas 2012 about a replacement, contact the Support Centre and we will check to ensure that we replace your machine on this schedule.
Budgeting for computer replacements is done centrally. To get an estimate of the cost to replace the computers and the mix of software annually we assign an average cost per individual computer replacement multiplied by 300. We have a computer allocation policy that indicates how we handle requests for computer equipment that fall outside of this replacement cycle. Employees working internal to the college may click below to view this policy on Share Point.
Computer Allocation Policy
