Students have expressed frustration with the public computer kiosks in the Usdan University Center, which have been prone to frequently shut down or freeze up.
“In the beginning of the year, almost none of them worked,” said Nate Ash-Morgan ’08.
Employees of Information Technology Services (ITS) said they are aware of the problems.
Todd Houle, an ITS Macintosh specialist who works on the public kiosks, said he has been working towards making the kiosks more reliable.
According to Houle, public kiosks across the campus have been operating for six to seven years with few problems. When they installed the new computers in Usdan, ITS chose to switch to new software, called W Kiosk, which was supposed to have made the computers quicker and easier to use.
The W Kiosk software didn’t operate as effectively as ITS had hoped, and Houle said that the Usdan terminals have since been switched to the Firefox web browser.
Since the switch, the terminals have been functioning more reliably.
At least one student admitted they have seen a recent improvement in the Usdan computers.
Elie Oberman ’11 said he had problems at the beginning of the year, but things seem to have taken a turn for the better.
“Now they seem to work,” Oberman said.
Houle also assured students that they should not worry about the security of their personal information on the public computers. As long as users close the web browser when they are done with the computer, all personal data would be securely erased. Houle warns that there is still a risk of exposing personal information if users don’t close the browser when they leave the computer.
In the past, Houle has written programs to automatically erase personal data, and is working toward installing such a program on the new computers. Houle said his goal is to keep kiosks stable and keep data secure.
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