Students will have to remember the new login format on school computers because of new software.

The district switched from Novell to Outlook. In addition all of the computers in the library are new.

“They will last us for many years,” school librarian Mrs. Amanda Gavin said.

New additions to the library brought both positive and negative changes. Logging in is now much faster.

Last year, logging in could take half a class period and then the system might crash. With the new software, there will be fewer people using the same server, so computers will naturally log in quicker.

An email feature, just like Microsoft is now available and staff members can sync the calendar feature to smart phones and Outlook.

In the past, installing updates had to be done individually, and would take a full day to a week to do because there were so many computers. This year, even with all the computers, installing updates can be done instantly.

But there are also minuses to the new software.

Every time someone needs to log in to print they must first install a printer. That means to print one sheet there are nine steps.

The district and software company continue to work on fixing the printing problems.

“With any new system not all the kinks have been worked out yet,” Ms. Gavin said.

by Imani Edouard-Sierra

photos by Gehrig Johnson