Community Genius Bar – 8 Mar 2014

Post author By
Post date February 11, 2014

It’s that time of year again. TechServ is pleased to announced we will be holding another one of our free genius bars on March 8th from 9:30am until 2pm at the People’s Emergency Center. If you have a computer that is having technical difficulties, bring it in and we’ll check it out. We’ll fix it if we can, but sometimes, there are issues that are too complex to fix on the spot. We also cannot guarantee a fix we make will be permanent nor that it is the best fix possible, but we’ll always try our best. If your device is in still under warranty, we recommend contacting your manufacturer’s support instead, but we’ll still be happy to take a look.

The People’s Emergency Center is located at:

325 N. 39th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Some helpful things for both you and us:

If bringing a laptop or tablet computer, please bring your power adapter as well.
If bringing a desktop, please bring just the desktop. We’ll have power cords and monitors with us. However, if your issue is with your monitor, do bring it along and we’ll take a look at it.
For additional information please email techserv@drexel.edu.

Has this ever happened to you?

OK, maybe not exactly like that, but let’s face it, computer problems happen.

We get that. We’ll be there to help you go from this:

To this:

(Editor’s note: TechServ apologizes for the remarkably bad attempt at being funny by our Head of Special Projects. Clearly Australia’s relaxed nature has rubbed off on him too much. Rest assured we have dispatched a team of highly trained drop bears to remedy the situation. We’re told this solution looked like this.)

Announcements

Happy 30th Birthday, Apple Macintosh

Post author By
Post date January 24, 2014

Thirty years ago today, computing history changed forever. After teasing it in what some call the most important Super Bowl ad of all time, Apple (then Apple Computer) revealed the Macintosh. For both TechServ and Drexel, the Macintosh holds a lot of history. At the launch of the Macintosh, Apple announced a partnership with a handful of academic institutions. One of them was Drexel (skip to the 53 minute marker in the video below.)

Despite the big names on the list, Drexel was special. Drexel was the first university on the list to launch the Macintosh, requiring every incoming student to purchase one. It was the beginning of a relationship with Apple that continues even today.

Some of the many Macintoshes awaiting unpacking.

The Macintosh was used in a variety of offices and programs at Drexel.

Drexel was also home to a handful of Apple Lisa systems as well as the Macintosh.

As the Macintosh hardware became more powerful, Drexel invested in newer Macintosh models, including the Macintosh Plus. However, they did not sport the custom Drexel D engraving.

Shortly after the release of the Macintosh at Drexel, a new student group was founded, The Drexel Macintosh Users Group, or DUsers for short. Without the Macintosh and without DUsers, there’s a good chance TechServ wouldn’t be who we are today. TechServ, in a way, is the successor of DUsers. We still use some of DUsers’ space on the university and our domain name continues to be dusers.drexel.edu We’re also thrilled to have some of DUsers’ equipment.

One of those pieces of equipment is one of the original Drexel Macintosh computers, complete with the custom Drexel branding. It still works, although on some days it requires a little encouragement to turn on. We’re also happy to be the owners of two Macintosh SE/30 computers, a Bondi Blue iMac, and a PowerMac G4 Cube among other pieces of historical Apple systems. We occasionally exhibit our collection at Drexel events.

Happy 30th Birthday, Macintosh.

(A special thank you to the Drexel University Archives for the historic Macintosh photos)

Announcements Weekly Meetings

No Meeting 20 Jan

Post author By
Post date January 15, 2014

Howdy there folks,

Please note, we will not be meeting on 20 January due to MLK Day. It was added to TicketLeap by mistake (Australia has different holidays than the US ^^;). If you try to book a spot for the 20th, you’ll now receive a message that sales have stopped for that day.

Sorry for the confusion!

~ Stephen

PS: Just to make that stupidly loud and clear:

We are not meeting on 20 Jan.

Announcements Weekly Meetings

Winter 2014 Meetings Are Here!

Post author By
Post date January 9, 2014

Howdy folks! It’s a new year and a new term, which means it’s time for new meetings too! Yay! For the Winter 2014 term, we’ll be meeting Mondays and Thursdays from 7p to 9p. UNIV-101 students, tickets for meetings are now up on TicketLeap for your reserving pleasure. Note: You’ll find a new events page on TicketLeap now, which lists both current and past meetings (or as TicketLeap calls them, “events”). We also currently have two events that are live, one for meetings, and one for testing the new TicketLeap design. Please make sure you get a ticket for a meeting, not the test event. Feel free to use the test event to test out the new TicketLeap though (and let us know if something breaks or looks wrong!)

Now go forth and reserve all the things!

Reserve all the things!

Online event registration with TicketLeap

Site Updates Weekly Meetings

Introducing A Sexy New Way To RSVP For UNIV-101

Post author By
Post date November 7, 2013

Greetings from Australia, where we’re sixteen hours in the future from Philly! Stephen here. Today I’d like to introduce you to a brand-new TicketLeap event page. And yes, it’s sexy.

I’m thrilled to announce that TechServ is a part of TicketLeap’s new event page preview. So what does this mean? For UNIV-101 students, it’s means RSVPing for a meeting has an entirely new look and feel.

The new page look very different, but navigating it should now be much easier. The first tab is the Home tab, which is like a summary of the event.

The About tab is exactly what its name suggests: information about the event.

The Map tab should be especially useful for first-timers. While there was a map in the past, it’s now stupidly obvious on how to get to TechServ (for the most part; we can’t do anything about the MacAlister basement being called the Ground Floor.)

Now for the part you probably actually care about: tickets. Click the Tickets tab and select the “performance” (read: meeting) you want to attend.

Just like before, select 1 ticket. However, now, instead of going to the Checkout page, you’ll need to click Add To Cart. Turns out TicketLeap introduced a Shopping Cart at some point that I completely missed the memo for (whoops! Note to self: check account options more often.) That said, you can now cue up tickets for multiple meetings in one go. No need to checkout for every single meeting.

When you’ve finished signing up for tickets like there’s no tomorrow, click the Checkout button.

The checkout page should be the same as before. To remove a ticket, change the quantity to 0, then click Update Quantities.

One thing that has not changed (yet) is the event calendar. It may get updated at a later time, but for now, it’s still on the old design. Nonetheless, it should have the same info as the new event page does.

If you have any issues with the new event page, please let us know so we can notify TicketLeap. It is still in beta and there are a few known issues (mainly on the admin side of things).

Enjoy the sexy new page!