paw@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Pat Wilson) (02/26/91)
We're beginning to project into the future here at Dartmouth, and one of the things we're seeing is a growth of UNIX workstation machines, owned either by individual faculty memebers or small departments without the resources to buy (or grow) UNIX admins. Traditionally, such folk have come to the Computing Center with their consulting/trouble-shooting needs (since we were the ones who ran the machines), and we hope that will continue. We're merely trying to minimize the impact of limited resources and (potentially) large problems... Does _your_ institution have a policy (or policies) concerning UNIX workstation acquistion and support that you'd be willing to share? We're considering a whole suite of things, from pre-purchase consulting (so we can steer people away from weirdIX boxes and toward platforms we're familiar with) to the possibility of "service contracts" with the central computing organization. The idea is not to usurp faculty autonomy, or to "control" all of the UNIX boxen on campus, but rather to enable purchasers to realize how much (or how little) trouble they might be getting in to, and how much help they can expect from the central facility. Please e-mail, and I'll summarize here if there's a demand. -- Pat Wilson Systems Manager, Project NORTHSTAR paw@northstar.dartmouth.edu