Oscoda Printer Fixed

The new part arrived on Friday, and was installed yesterday, Monday the 29th.

Printing in Oscoda - Update

The technician arrived on-site last week and found the problem to be a torn transfer belt. A new one has been ordered from Ricoh under warranty and will be installed this week.

Since the tear is on the same side that the fading problem with the black photo conductor units, it's possible that the tear in the belt is the cause for our replacing the photo conductor units.

Update:

I'm still waiting for the new transfer belt to arrive.

Printing at Oscoda

As of Friday, October 12, the printer at Robert J. Parks Library is having print quality problems. The manufacturer has been contacted and will be sending a on-site Technician the diagnose the printer this week after attempts by myself to correct the problem. We hope to have the problem fixed by the end of the week at the latest.

Patrons can still print at this branch, but the quality of a printed page will not be up to par, but still usable. If you need to print something that will be used in a professional manner, such as a resume, I suggest utilizing the printer at one of our other branches.

According to the counter, the printer at Robert J. Parks library has the most pages printed at nearly 30,000 pages.

Public Wireless, or WiFi, What Is It?

For users that are new or have little or no technical knowledge, I'd like to explain in layman's terms what our Public Wifi service is all about.

First off, WiFi is a technology that allows different kinds of devices (game consoles, computers, etc) to connect on the same computer network without wires. Our service allows people with laptop computers, PDAs, or anything else to connect to a library's computer network without wires, and use the Internet. This wikipedia entry spells it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wifi

To use our public wifi service, you need the following:

A laptop or PDA or any other device that has:

1. A wifi or wireless network adapter card that supports the 802.11b or 802.11g standard.

2. A web browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, etc) that supports SSL encryption. That's virtually any modern web browser on almost any modern device today.

3. A valid e-mail address to allow you to validate your new account. AOL, Charter, Comcast, Hotmail and Yahoo among others will work.

The operating system (Windows, OSX, Linux, PocketPC, Palm), processor, RAM, hard drive, display, or other part of your device doesn't matter. If the computer has a wireless network adapter card and has a web browser, chances are it'll work.

On a Windows or Macintosh computer, it is highly recommended that you run anti-virus and anti-malware protection and run Microsoft Update (Windows) or Software Update (Apple) to ensure that any security patches are applied.

You need a web browser that supports SSL (a standard that secures the link between your computer and another computer) because only SSL encryption is allowed. This is a security feature that prevents someone from intercepting your account's user name and password over the air.

The service is free to use, and has no expiration date (unless you only use it once or twice and then don't touch it for more than six months).

We do not allow 24-hour-a-day connections for three reasons:

1. To ensure reasonable use by everyone. This service is meant for anyone that wants to bring in their own laptop or PDA and not have to use our public computers.

2. To prevent resource abuse (an Internet Connection is a resource, and a critical one for us). If something happens where someone is tampering with our equipment or affecting our Internet Connections, we want to be awake when it happens so we can resolve the issue quickly.

3. To prevent any legal issues. There have been cases in recent years where individuals used wifi after business hours, or was on a network that was not supposed to provide access, or otherwise failed to abide by their acceptable use policy.

For example, if you connected to a coffee shop's wifi and didn't go inside and buy a cup of coffee, it can be considered to be leeching services. This is a crime. We limit the time our hotspots are on and use an authentication server to ensure that 1) you are authorized to be connected and use our service, and 2) to ensure that you can't possibly be able to sit outside at all hours.

T1 and Public Wifi

As of today, all of our branch libraries have been upgraded to full T1s and now offer public wifi. Here is a map of our hotspots: IADL Hotspots Map

For any questions, please refer our to Wireless Access Guidlines, FAQ, and Merit Network's Acceptable Use Policy. In general, bandwidth via wifi is capped at 256K, the time limit is passively enforced, access to the Internet is unfiltered, and access is only available during a branch's business hours. Remember that users are responsible for their own equipment.