UoA Internet Access – To premium, or not to premium?

The University of Auckland gives free internet access to students, but its speed is capped.  You can purchase a premium package for $20 for the year to upgrade to “high speed” – but is it worth it?

Yes.  I bought my upgrade the first time I used the computers on campus, that’s how bad it is without upgrading.  It’s now well into the semester and I had forgotten how slow the capped, non-premium internet actually is, until I was in the Geography lab working with another student on their computer, wondering why Facebook was taking so long to load.  (Okay, so I wasn’t “working,” but you get the idea).

It only took me short while to realise it was because she didn’t have the premium upgrade.  But that got me thinking, why anyone wouldn’t pay the $20 for the year, to guarantee your first 200mb each month are delivered swiftly.

For me, it’s a no-brainer.  Once I became accustomed to fast internet (not that my home internet is even very fast by absolute standards!) I became addicted, and nothing less will suffice, especially when it only costs ~17c per day of semester.

Some people claim that unlimited internet access should be free for all students, and some qualify that by suggesting acceptable use policies.  But to have a day’s worth of high-speed, for less than the cost of a text message – surely you can’t complain about that?

Auckland Uni changes to Google Apps

Today I received an email to my University of Auckland email account (EC mail), one I use only for uni-based communications, that they are changing the provider from the unusual (assumedly) proprietary system to Google’s mail interface.

This is an exciting change, because the email web client is quite old, does not support html emails, has limited address book features, and is very poor at managing emails in folders.  Hopefully the new EC webmail will be much better than the last!

It goes live on 9 July 2008, and the FAQs are here.

It would be great if the university directory (e.g. Lecturer’s email addresses) was accessible directly from the webmail interface, and if there was support for calendar with your timetable and lecturer’s office hours, assignment due dates, readings for a week, etc.  All that information is put onto Cecil (Auckland’s enterprise learning tool) at some stage, so I it might as well be accessible from a tool that provides value.  Perhaps even implementing Google docs for use in group assignments would be useful.

It’s very nice to see progress in this space… so often your spirit for the adoption of new technologies in large organisations is crushed by the bureaucracy in that organisation.