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Macintosh Users Can Co-Exist in UMUC's PC-Centric Environment |
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At UMUC there are two main applications that all faculty, staff and students must be able to access. These include WebTycho and MyUMUC. When accessing WebTycho on a Macintosh, it is strongly recommended that you use Firefox as the browser. Typically Mac users will use Safari as browser of choice, however, WebTycho's navigation will not function properly in this browser. When downloading Firefox, you will need to ensure that you also download the most recent Java Virtual Machine (Mac OS X | Mac OS 9 and earlier) and allow pop-up blocker access for WebTycho. Unfortunately, the only way to access MyUMUC is to use either a PC or an Intel Mac. From the author's experience, if you have an Intel Mac and load Windows on your computer, you will be able to access all Windows based applications regardless of the type of platform. If you have an Intel Mac and would like to install Windows, there are two types of software programs available that will allow you to run Microsoft Windows on a Mac OS X.
One thing to keep in mind when installing Microsoft Windows is the unfortunate vulnerability to viruses and spyware. As such, you will want to make sure you install and keep up-to-date anti-virus software on the Microsoft Windows partition or virtual software. For more information on antivirus software for Macs and Windows see:
You can also set up your Mac to access the UMUC Email Exchange Sever using Entourage 2004thar is part of Office 2004 Professional for Macintosh. Entourage 2004 is a Personal Information Manager (PIM) that gives you the ability to handle email messages, contacts, schedules, notes, documents and more from one central location. If you do not have a copy of the Office 2004 Professional for Macs suite, as a faculty/staff member of UMUC, you can purchase a copy at a steep discount from the University of Maryland, Office of Information and Technology department (OIT). The unfortunate limitation of the UMD/UMUC agreement is that the software must be purchased at the OIT office. You can not purchase it online or via phone. See Discounted Software for Educational Use for additional information. To configure Entourage 2004 to access UMUC's Exchange server take a look at the Entourage 2004 tutorial. If you are in need of additional software not available through UMUC or OIT, you may consider a third party vendor. Below are a few online vendors you may find of interest.
For those of you who have been thinking of purchasing an Intel Mac, visit the UMUC Educational Computing Initiative (ECI) webpage, then select . The ECI offers educational discounts on personal purchases for students, faculty, and staff. Since the Intel Mac allows you to have access to both Mac and PC environments using one computer, there is no need to ditch your Mac in order access UMUC's applications. Even though UMUC is PC-centric, Mac users can still co-exist and accomplish the necessary tasks as faculty, staff and students. |
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Additional Mac Resources
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URLs of Links used on this Page
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While UMUC's main
computer platform, focus and IT support is PC-centric, you can still
utilize a Macintosh and remain productive. This
article will provide you with information on what software will function the best when accessing UMUC applications, where to purchase software,
hardware, locate third party education vendors, as well as provide you with
some additional Mac user resources.