The changeover in online registration has been a smooth transition, as was reported to the Academic Technology Advisory Committee on Friday.

Kathy Reed, associate director of the information systems department, said the staff had planned on switching over to the new registration program at 6 a.m. March 26. But when the staff came into the office, they found that the program had already switched.

“It went better than what the student paper said,” said Reed.

She said the transition was so seamless that none of the students called for help at midnight when the switch occurred.

She said the program is much more usable than the previous version. This version allows students to search all classes, even before the students can sign up for the classes, and operates quicker.

Students had very little to stay to the office, she said. Most of the feedback they have received has been positive. She said there have been no complaints of the system running slowly, which was a major handicap of the old system.

She said 6,400 seats for classes had been filled by Thursday night, before the sophomores and freshmen could register.

With the new program, the regular printed section in The Daily Eastern News has been omitted. Reed said this is a banner issue, and if they had printed the schedule, it would have been a 400-page document because of Banner’s formatting.

Brian Poulter, a journalism professor, said paper schedules were probably unneeded for most students.

The plan to issue to or require laptops of all freshmen was indirectly explored. Some classes, particularly those in the communication disorders and sciences program, would be altered to allow better usage of laptops in the classrooms.

One concern is being able to support all the laptops simultaneously, said Chat Chatterji, assistant vice-president of information technology. The current system works with the current use, but he said running 30 laptops for an hour and a half might strain the network a great deal.

To help offset the problem, equipment is being adjusted in the pilot areas to improve speed and avoid problems.

Greg DeYoung, associate director of campus infrastructure, described the current system as acting like nearly 340 islands around campus. Since they act somewhat independently, the bandwidth cannot be easily shared. That means that parts of the campus with many computers in use will be slow while others function normally.

He said there is new technology that may help with evening out the connection speeds around the campus.

The Student Technology Fee Committee, a subcommittee of ATAC, also made a report. John Henderson, director of client services for the Center for Academic Technology Support, said they have made some changes that should help keep the fee as low as possible.

This, in part, is a result of the plan to reduce the number of public computers on campus. This is because more and more students are bringing personal computers, both Mac and PC, to campus, which means lower maintenance costs.

He said the committee was considering what to do with the lab space freed up by the removal of these machines. One suggestion the committee had was to convert those areas into laptop space, with room for laptop hardware and more support services.