This page should answer most of your student or staff software related questions.

Licensing - When you purchase a computer program you are purchasing one or more licenses to use it. Algonquin College and ITS are committed to ensuring that we are as legal as possible in this regard. We can not install software on a computer without being certain that it is a legal copy. We may ask you to verify that the software license is not installed or has enough extra copies to proceed.

Borrowing Programs - The Algonquin Learning Resource Center will lend licensed software to staff for working at home. It is not recommended that you install this software on your office computer due to potential problems. ITS will happily install it for you and ensure that it functions properly on our network. At this time we can not lend software to students.

Algonquin Applications - Citrix Metaframe allows students and staff to use programs that aren't installed on your computer. Either from your office, classroom or home. This saves you from purchasing expensive software or searching for where it is installed.

Installation request - Contact ITS if you need software installed on your computer. We can help you decide if your computer is capable of running the software and what else might be needed. Your department may have to purchase the software or hardware. We will need the computer barcode and the room number when you phone us. Getting Help

Updates - All software has updates which must be added to add features, increases stability or improve security. Some are automatically updated, some have a small routine that you must run, others require that you visit the publisher's web page. Read your documentation, contact the publisher and contact ITS if needed.

Images - Software is copied onto a computer in the form of an "image". This is a fully loaded and configured copy of everything needed and takes very little time to install. If your College computer is having trouble ITS may decide to reimage it to put a fresh installation of everything. You should be aware that it involves wiping out everything on the computer so make sure you do your backups first.

Standards - Some of the standard software at Algonquin includes MS Office Suite 2007, Windows XP and Internet Explorer v7.0. You may choose to use different packages but it limits the support ITS can offer. For example, some College systems will not operate properly unless you use the IE browser to access them. You may also find that different packages do not open files you are sent by College students and staff.