Posted on request of Marie Vitulli (Math Emerita), link to petition here:
Students, faculty, and staff at the University of Oregon (UO) have depended on the computer repair shop at McKenzie Hall to maintain their computer equipment. If the shop closes all UO personnel will have to find lesser qualified repair services off campus. In some cases there isn’t service available in Eugene and we will be forced to mail in our equipment for repair. We will be without essential equipment to perform our jobs while our equipment is in transit and at a far away shop. Please sign this petition to urge the UO administration to reconsider their decision to eliminate this valuable resource.
Initial signage rate is about 2 per hour but it is a saturday
would be nice to get several hundred signees
Or, you know, deal with the fact that change is inevitable, and recognize that a cost savings here might help improve other essential services. UO needs to rebuild the infrastructure needed to support faculty research (including the research of every faculty member reading this comment). Would you rather see a repair shop close or our network go down?
You’re all screaming to save a luxury item in an austerity economy. What good is the personal service you received from the shop if there’s no network to connect your repaired laptop to? Our CIO ain’t crying wolf.
This is certainly not a case of “either or” and efficient hardware repair is certainly not a luxury item – its a necessity.
Faculty research support goes much beyond the “network” and the research computing enterprise encompasses many things that cost a lot more than the meager savings that come from closing down the shop and this enterprise, at a sensible research University, is almost entirely supported by the VPR mostly using indirect costs.
The bigger saving is more capital space too. That yields space for another computer lab.
Please don’t touch my luxury items… overpaid admins and underpaid football players.
In my experience they weren’t qualified, efficient or reasonably priced. Sorry but we have to end administrative waste on this campus, whatever form it takes on.
The shop is an essential service that impacts all aspects of the university positively. Anyone in need of assistance with a computer related problem has saved valuable time using the shop’s assistance vs searching for help elsewhere.
I am sure the cost savings are minute compared to the logistic problems the lack of this service will cause overall. To the person saying the staff is not qualified–of which I have never seen evidence –my suggestion is to invest in continued education and improve the situation instead of resigning and leaving the rest of faculty and staff abandoned.
This is an essential resource for students and faculty. It provides jobs for students on campus and it also makes computer repair affordable and local when otherwise we would have to travel to Portland!
Anyone traveling to Portland for computer repair isn’t doing it right.
Hell yeah. I had a computer I tried to have repaired at the lab. Sat their for two weeks. Then they forgot to contact me to say that the parts would be $400 but that they couldn’t find a supplier for them. Then they tried to charge me $100 for diagnosiing the problem even though they didn’t fix anything. I didn’t give them crap. I purchased a new laptop and spent an extra $200 on the priority care package. Non whenever I’ve had an issue, somebody shows up the next day and fixes the computer in my office.
The old school computer repair shop made sense with desktops. It doesn’t with laptops, where its often cheaper to fix the computer by getting a new one. Seriously, let it day. We aren’t training future geek squad folks here at UO.
A particular problem with laptops is dust clogging the vents. Almost all laptops require a special tool set to open the back and cleaning the vents is often quite tricky. If not attended to, the laptop will overheat and die – if attended to, the cost is $100 compared to buying a new laptop and having your old laptop’s hard drive destroyed, Cleaning services like this are important and the campus shop does them well.
I don’t see this happening..saving something useful to the people of campus. After all didn’t the administration just “hire” more administration…and send layoff notices to a bunch of classified staff. Got to pay their “new” hires someway…at anyone’s expense works for them. Sorry but they are more important because…they be running the show don’t ya know.,