For those who will be returning to Syracuse University in the fall, be prepared for change. Seniors, don’t get too excited that the wake you leave behind will foster a huge wave of change – these ripples will be made by Windows. No, not literal transparent windows. Microsoft Windows.

Starting this May, SU will begin one of its most ambitious technological endeavors since the implementation of the SUID electronic number system. Sorry to let down all you sci-fi fanatics, but it’s not holographic imaging, cloning capabilities or telepathy-enabling implants. It’s better. It’s Windows 7.

Currently, most SU terminals run on Windows XP, which was released in October of 2001, making the technology employed by SU more than 9 years old. Technology years are akin to dog years, except exponentially worse, making the current user systems practically ancient. Some terminals in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management jumped the gun several years ago and upgraded to Windows Vista, released in January 2007. Although Vista may be more youthful, it exhibits significantly more glitches than its senior comrade. Thankfully the mummified shell that is XP is being shipped off to the software bone-yard and making way for the vivacious 7.

If you haven’t heard about Windows 7, crawl out from under that rock and learn about Windows’ most sophisticated mainstream operation system to date.

Windows 7 does offer unique and impressive capabilities wholly derived and developed for itself. The most stunning characteristic is its desktop virtualization. Desktop virtualization may sound like a really irrelevant and nerdy term to those unfamiliar with the concept. Is it nerdy? Yep. Is it irrelevant? Not a snowball’s chance in hell.

Stephen Rieks, the assistant director of systems and services at SU and an adjunct professor in the School of Information Studies, said the time of desktop virtualization has arrived.

But don’t come running back this fall expecting thin clients in every corner of the university. Rieks estimates that the university will start by deploying 50 percent of Windows 7 in the desktop virtualization model. As for when the entire campus will go the virtual desktop route, it’s hard to say. The choice to transition is really up to individual colleges and offices of the university for the immediate future. Once the support time span for XP expires, however, virtual desktops will completely usurp what is now becoming a technology of the past.

SU is planning to jump on the freshly departed desktop virtualization bandwagon and use Windows 7 to employ desktop virtualization on as large a scale as possible. For you as an end user, you will most likely not see too drastic of a change. Windows 7 runs the same programs and applications as XP, and what you are presented with on the monitor of an SU terminal will change minimally, if at all.

Before you go off assuming that 7 is actually just XP under a different name, consider the term ‘virtualization.’ In desktop virtualization, what you see on the monitor is not coming from the terminal from where you’re sitting: Rather, it is in a server, most likely in a different building, and is being transmitted to your terminal. However, if the best-laid plans go accordingly, your terminal will no longer be a full-fledged desktop, but rather a thin client.

Apologies for all the new tech vocabulary, but this one’s easy, I swear. A thin client is the body of a computer without the brain. It consists of a screen, two USB ports, one for a mouse and one for a keyboard, and a giant power button. This single-button-wonder receives the data from your SU account and portrays it on your screen. When you open that Word file of last year’s philosophy paper, you are not clicking and retrieving from what’s right in front of you, but rather from a server that could be virtually anywhere. And voila, you have virtualization.

Why should you care that your information is hosted somewhere completely different? Well, if you have any concern for the environment or the manner in which SU spends the money it so graciously collects from tuition and student fees, where your information is hosted and the manner in which you view it is a very big deal.

‘It will save five to six figures per year on electricity bills alone,’ Rieks said. He also said the efficiency of the thin client will drastically reduce watts used and emissions sent into the environment, and at $1 per 10 watts, it will save the university a substantial sum.

Jessica Smith is an information technology management and television, radio and film major and the tech columnist. Her column appears every Thursday, and she can be reached at jlsmit22@syr.edu.

Published on February 17, 2010 at 12:00 pm