Personal Computer and Ethernet Recommendations at UH Hilo

UHH Home > Faculty & Staff > Office of Technology & Distance Learning > Academic Computing Services (ACS)

Equipment Required to Connect to the Campus Network

  1. Computer with an 10/100BaseT Ethernet adapter a CAT5 connector
  2. Ethernet patch cable of appropriate length with CAT5 connectors

Personal Computer Recommendation

  • Windows XP Pro or better (Not Windows ME or XP/Home, both are known to have problems)
  • A minimum of 1GB of RAM
  • 2.0 Ghz Intel or equivalent CPU speed or higher
  • Ethernet card as described above
  • 80GB hard drive or better
  • No Floppy drive
  • CD ROM or DVD/CD writer (Optional but very useful!)

Software

Both the Firefox and Internet Explorer web browsers, both are free.

Microsoft Office Suite 2003 or better. UH Hilo uses the Microsoft Office 2003 suite in all public labs.

Please do not use Microsoft Works!

A virus checking program in which you perform regular updates. You can get Mcafee at http://www.hawaii.edu/downloads/mcafee/.

Other recommended items

Close up of a Pen Drive plugged into a UCB port.A "pen drive", to transport your data to and from classes. A pen drive is a storage device that plugs into the Universal Serial Bus (USB) port, available on many the public PCs at UH Hilo.

A box of floppy diskettes to turn in homework assignments on. They are also good to back up important homework assignments. Hard drives fail, which might mean losing all of your hard work!

A computer headset with microphone. Most UH Hilo public labs have headset and microphone ports available, in the front of the machine, to take advantage of multimedia software. Having your own headset will insure cleanliness and availability.

Mac users

Mac users may choose a Mac PC that is equivalent in function to the recommended Intel based PC. However, note that with the exception of Hawaiian Language College, most faculty use Intel based PCs. Note that Macs may not make floppy disks that are readable by the majority of your professors.

Why a laptop?

 

Laptop users with a wireless NIC or internal hardware can connect to the UHH wirelss system using either their name@hawaii.edu account or their PC access account (obtain this once you come on campus.)

Laptop PCs can be plugged into the UH Hilo network in many of the University Classroom Building (UCB) classrooms. You may take notes in class directly on your laptop. You may find having a laptop PC more useful, both in student housing and many of the UCB classrooms, than a just desktop PC.

In the University Classroom Building (UCB)

Note: This section is coming. As of right now, the UCB laptop network connections do not work. The reason this is a problem is in how networks function in general and needs to be worked out with ITS UH Manoa. Mahalo for you understanding. When they do work, the instructions below should work too. However, you can still bring your laptop in the UCB classrooms and plug them into the power outlet.

View of a student laptop plugged into an Ethernet dome connector, typical of the first row and ADA seats in UCB.Students can plug laptops into outlets in the ADA seating areas and the front rows of the UCB classrooms.

You must bring all of your own cables to make this work.  Some "domes" only have power outlets while others have both Ethernet and power outlets.  To be able to use your laptop network connector, you will need to know how to configure both the hardware and software on your own and should have received the instructions when you bought your laptop PC. If not, please contact your vendor. To connect Ethernet, set your Windows TCP/IP properties to DHCP or "Automatic".