Tech Tuesday: Microsoft Vista

From Information Resources and Technologies

With spring semester well underway and with planning for the summer computer replacements also moving along, you may wonder what the current plan is for St. Thomas' support of Microsoft Vista on campus. As mentioned previously in a Tech Tuesday article last November, our support of Vista started when students came on campus this school year. IRT supports connecting to UST’s network for student computers using Vista.

You may visit the IRT Web page for more detailed information on student Vista support. The following update pertains to support for faculty and staff computers on campus.

The end of March saw Microsoft release Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Vista. This was a milestone for the OS, as it fixed many issues that affected the usability and stability of the operating system; however, due to the timing of this release, we are planning to move to Vista in the summer of 2009 to ensure we are prepared to fully support it on campus computers.

Currently IRT is continuing to research and test the compatibility of the applications we have on campus for Vista support. We are specifically testing the 40 most common applications that are installed around campus, as well as department specific applications/systems you may depend on to do your job. We will provide information on our testing and research results to help in planning for possible upgrades and workarounds to allow software to function with Vista. In addition, IRT is in the process of testing and upgrading some of our internal systems needed to enable us to fully support Vista.

If you have questions about specific systems or applications, contact your IRT Consultant or contact the IRT Tech Desk, (651) 962-6230.