Windows-2000 for Computing Science Induction

Welcome to the Department of Computing Science, and to the University of Newcastle. In order to make best use of this document, you need to have:-
  1. Registered as a student of the university, and so have a valid student number.
  2. Self-registered on a UCS (University Computing Service) PC Cluster.
  3. Read and followed the guides 120 Getting Started with Windows 2000 and 121 Managing files in Windows 2000. It is preferable if you read these guides on the screen of your PC, but you may take one printed copy (of each) if you need to.

Common Tools

In addition to programming assignments, you must become familiar with other common communications tools. You are expected to read your personal electronic mail and check the newsgroups relevant to your program of study on a daily basis. Announcements about coursework and lectures are often distributed in this way. Not seeing them is no excuse for not knowing, and will seriously reduce your chances of getting a successful result at the end of your module.

Electronic Mail

After you have registered for an ID on the university computers, you will be given a personal mailbox for electronic mail. Messaages sent to this address will be directed to the computer account that you obtained by self registration (as described earlier). Spend a few minutes finding out your own e-mail address, and that of a few friends and your tutor. You can use the "E-mail address" sub-menu item on the "Search" page of the University's Web site. The search page may be accessed using the "Search" icon in the top right hand corner of the University's home page.

You may find that several people are listed when you look up a surname. It may help you identify your tutor if you know that staff login IDs all begin with at least three letters, whereas student login IDs all begin with n and a digit. If this does not help, then you may wish to read the UCS guide "How to use and look for E-Mail addresses" for more advice.

Access to your personal mailbox is achieved using the Student Webmail Service. You will be asked to log in to the system (using your Windows 2000 identifier and password), after which you will be able to read your mail, send new messages, reply to messages sent to you, etc. The Webmail Service is described in guide EM03.

Microsoft Office

If you have time, explore some of the other parts of the Office suite of programs. You will probably end up using Microsoft Word to write up many of your assignments. You should read the UCS documentation on Microsoft Word.

News

The Student Webmail Service also provides a way of viewing the newsgroups. Clicking on the "News" icon will cause a page to be displayed, giving you the opportunity to subscribe to new newsgroups, and to unsubscribe from newsgroups in which you are no longer interested.

On the main mail reading page, there is a drop-down list of all your mail folders, and this list also contains all of the newsgroups to which you currently subscribe. Selecting one of these will cause the contents of the newsgroup to be displayed, and the news items can then be viewed in the same way as "regular" mail messages.

This method of reading news is not totally satisfactory, and it is intended that a different (non-Web-based) news reader will be installed on the campus Windows 2000 systems. You will be informed, probably by a message posted to the newsgroups, when a new (and better?) news reader is available.

Here are some of the newsgroups to which you are advised to subscribe:

Programming Languages


Departmental Software

Most departments in the university have special software that is made available mainly for their own students. This is linked to the start menu. Software will be added to this menu during the year as it is needed.

Chris Ritson  2 October 2000