Paul Stainthorp Schrödinger's cataloguer

Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’

Using your university/Athens login for student discounts

Posted on October 8th, 2012 by Paul Stainthorp

We occasionally get enquiries from students who are trying to register for student discounts on shopping websites, and who are being directed to log in using their institutional credentials (often “Athens“, as we use OpenAthens as a gateway to authentication via the UK Access Management Federation) and/or provide a University email address.

There’s a list of such sites at the bottom of this blog post. I’ll add to the list if and when I find out about others.

If a student at the University of Lincoln is presented with a generic “Athens” login on one of these student discount websites (and unless they already have an Athens cookie on their computer from a previous e-resources session), they will have to click on “Alternative login” before they can be directed to the correct University of Lincoln login point. (See these instructions for an idea of how to follow this alternative login option.)

These sites are frankly a source of annoyance to the Library.

We rarely know about them in advance; they cause confusion to students, who often require help logging in; and they tie up staff time on the helpdesk and over the phone trying to guide students through a login process on a website that we’ve never seen. Presumably some of the companies are listed on the UK Access Management Federation website, but I don’t know how we might identify them all, or whether we can get notified about new ones.

Here’s a list of student discount websites that use some kind of institutional login to authenticate the student:

Adept Scientific - Adept4Education (edustore.adeptscience.co.uk) Bibliography Software Data Analysis & Visualisation, Laboratory Applications, Mathematics and Simulation – this is slightly different in that it uses ‘traditional’ direct Athens authentication, rather than OpenAthens as a gateway to federated access.
Microsoft store (www.microsoft.com/student/en-gb/Deals/default.aspx) – deals on Microsoft Office University 2010, Office for Mac University 2011, Windows 7 Professional Upgrade.
Microsoft Dreamspark (www.dreamspark.com) – free specialist developer and designer software, including Visual Studio, XNA Game Studio, etc.
A number of companies that use the UNiDAYS (www.myunidays.com) student discounts portal:
- Boohoo
- Topshop
- Waterstones
- etc.

Tags: Adept Scientific, Adept4Education, Alternative login, Athens, authentication, Boohoo, deals, discount, DreamSpark, Microsoft, MS Office 2010, OpenAthens, software, student discount, students, Topshop, UK Federation, UNiDAYS, Waterstones, Windows 7
Posted in Uncategorized | (1) Comment | Click here to add a comment »

E-resources and the Portal: choosing the correct account prefix on Windows 7 computers

Posted on October 21st, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp

I’m getting an increasing number of queries from students with PCs and laptops running Microsoft Windows 7, who are having problems logging in to electronic resources via the University Portal.

When the user first tries to log in to a page under https://portal.lincoln.ac.uk/, the username field, by default, already has a user account prefix filled in (for example “USER-PC\“). This is incompatible with the Portal login which requires a username prefix of network\

(I’m calling it a “user account prefix”, but that’s almost certainly not the official Microsoft terminology for it.)

To get around this problem, the user has to click on the link to ‘Use another account‘, then enter the complete Portal username in the format: network\accountID, plus their normal University password. This will allow them to log in to the Portal and access any e-resources.

If their computer insists on automatically trying to log them in using their ‘local’ user account, they may first have to tell Internet Explorer to delete both cookies and saved passwords (under Tools > Internet Options), then try the Portal / Athens login page again.

Tags: accounts, e-resources, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, network\accountID, operating system, Portal, prefix, problems, Windows 7
Posted in Uncategorized | (0) Comments | Click here to add a comment »

How to send emails to your Outlook contacts and distribution lists via ‘Select Names’

Posted on September 22nd, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp

These instructions hold true for MS Outlook 2003, as provided on the corporate desktop at the University of Lincoln.

If you store contacts or distribution lists in the Outlook ‘Contacts’ pane, you might find that they are not available to choose from the ‘Select Names’ window. (They ought to appear under ‘Outlook Address Book’ in the drop-down list under the heading ‘Show Names from the:‘.)

If you can’t see that option, here’s how to make it appear:

On the ‘Tools’ menu, click ‘E-mail Accounts’.
Under ‘Directory’, select ‘View or change existing directories or address books’, then ‘Next >’.
Under ‘Directories and Address Books’, click ‘Add…’.
Select ‘Additional Address Books’, then ‘Next >’.
Click ‘Outlook Address Book’, then ‘Next >’.
Click ‘OK’, then ‘Finish’, and finally close/restart Outlook.

Now, when you go to the ‘Select Names’ window, your contacts will appear in the ’Show Names from the:‘ menu, under ‘Outlook Address Book’ > ‘Contacts’.

Tags: 2003, address book, contacts, corporate desktop, distribution lists, email, how to, Microsoft, Outlook
Posted in Uncategorized | (0) Comments | Click here to add a comment »

MS Office 2010 ‘Ultimate Steal’ software deal for students

Posted on September 14th, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp

I don’t think I’ve blogged these instructions before: how current University of Lincoln students can register for and download Microsoft Office Professional Academic 2010 for ‘only’ £49.99 under the Microsoft Ultimate Steal offer.

N.B. This offer is available for current UK students only – i.e. only students with an .ac.uk email address. (There’s a separate deal on the same software for University of Lincoln staff.)

How to do it:

Go to the Microsoft Ultimate Steal page at: http://www.microsoft.com/student/office/en-gb/default.aspx (or access it via the University IT offers page at: lncn.eu/ghj)
Click the ‘Buy Now’ button. Then, enter your University of Lincoln student email address, in the format: accountID@students.lincoln.ac.uk (for example: 11987654@students.lincoln.ac.uk).
You will be sent an email to your student email account, from ‘studentoffice.uk@digitalriver.com’, headed ‘Microsoft Program Confirmation’. (You can log in to access your student email at email.lincoln.ac.uk, using your University of Lincoln accountID and password.) Click on the link contained in the email. You should be automatically logged in to the Microsoft store.
Click ‘Buy Now’ again. You’ll be taken to the ‘Shopping Basket’ page, which will display details of the MS Office package (for £49.99), plus a physical backup disk for an additional £10.00 – although you can delete this from the shopping basket if you don’t want it, by clicking on the little ‘bin’ icon.
Click on the ‘Checkout’ button, fill in your credit/debit card and address details, and you’ll receive one licence key for Microsoft Office Professional Academic 2010.

Tags: deals, download, email, ICT Services, Microsoft, MS Office 2010, offers, software, Ultimate Steal
Posted in Uncategorized | (0) Comments | Click here to add a comment »

Alternative web browsers at the University of Lincoln

Posted on April 21st, 2011 by Paul Stainthorp

Did you know that Google Chrome is available to install on the corporate Windows desktop at the University of Lincoln, as an alternative to Microsoft/Windows Internet Explorer 7? I didn’t, until yesterday, but now I’ve just found out how to install it:

Go to the Start menu and select the Control Panel;
Double-click on Add or Remove Programs;
When the ‘Add or Remove Programs’ window appears, select Add New Programs;
Scroll down the alphabetical list until you see Google Chrome 10.0. Select it, and click on Add.

Once it’s been installed (which will take a minute), you should be able to find it in the Start menu, under All Programs > Google Chrome. You can create a shortcut by draging the icon to your desktop if you want.

N.B. unfortunately the way Chrome has been deployed means that it “doesn’t support Roaming Profiles properly and instead stores all user data in the Local Settings on the PC. This means bookmarks and other preferences will not follow users if they move between different PCs”.

~~~

A version of Mozilla Firefox is also available on the corporate desktop: supplied “as an experimental trial” by ICT services, it uses a VMware ‘thin’/virtual application, so that you don’t have to physically install it on your computer: instead the application is delivered over the network every time you use it.

You can find it at P:\Firefox. The version available here is version 3 of Firefox; I don’t know if there are any plans to upgrade this to the current version. You can create a shortcut by draging the icon from the P: drive to your desktop.

Tags: alternative, browser, Chrome, corporate desktop, Firefox, Google, IE7, install, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, Mozilla, software, thinware, virtual application, Windows
Posted in Uncategorized | (4) Comments | Click here to add a comment »

If it’s DreamSpark, it must be October…

Posted on October 4th, 2010 by Paul Stainthorp

October is the month when n-hundred first-year students on journalism, media, and computing programmes seem all at once to discover Microsoft’s DreamSpark software offer.

DreamSpark provides access to a range of professional Microsoft tools (including MS Visual Studio, MS SQL server, and XNA Game Studio), all free to students in the UK. Unfortunately it’s not particularly obvious how to get access; the registration process is not very easy to follow.

So: step-by-step registration instructions for students at the University of Lincoln are below (originally blogged in 2008 and now updated). For help with this process, please contact either:

Paul Stainthorp, Electronic Resources Librarian, tel: (01522) 88 6193.
Mark Aldridge, Learning Adviser, tel: (01522) 88 6877.

Before you start: if you don’t already have one, you’ll first need to sign up for a Windows Live ID / MSN account. (Windows Live ID is a single-sign on username & password that you can use to access various Microsoft websites and services, including Hotmail, MSN Messenger, and Xbox LIVE.) You can register for a Windows Live ID at: https://accountservices.passport.net/

Here’s how to register and download the software, in 13 ‘easy’ steps:

Go to: https://www.dreamspark.com/
Click on ‘Sign In’ from the left-hand menu.
Log in using your Windows Live ID username & password.
You should be directed back to the DreamSpark website. Click on ‘Get Verified’ from the left-hand menu.
From the ‘Get Verified…’ page, select the following options, then click on ‘Continue’:
- What country do you live in? United Kingdom
- How would you like to verify? Verify as a Student
- How would you like to verify your account? Get verified through my School
Select ‘University of Lincoln’ from the ‘School Selector’ list, then click on ‘Continue’.
You should now be directed to an ‘Athens login’ page. From this page, click on ‘Alternative login’.
From the ‘Find your organisation’ page, type the words University of Lincoln in the quick search box and click on ‘Go’.
From the list of search results, click on ‘University of Lincoln’ (it should be the first option in the list).
Next, click on ‘Go to the University of Lincoln login page »’.
Log in using your University of Lincoln login details (just as for the University of Lincoln Portal, i.e. username: network\accountID plus your usual University password).
You should see the message “Please wait while we transfer you”, before being redirected back to the DreamSpark website (showing a ‘Congratulations’ message).
Click on ‘View All Products to Download’. You should now be able to download and install all of the DreamSpark software packages.