Virtual Computer Lab

The Engineering Virtual Computer Lab is a way for you to gain access to most of the Engineering lab's software from a remote location. By using this tool you will be able to do homework or projects from your home or dorm room.

The Virtual Computer Lab uses a program called "Citrix" to connect to the Engineering network. Read these instructions to connnect. Click on the question mark near the Virtual Lab login form for additional help.

Follow this link to access the Virtual Lab. The link will open in a new browser window.

Supported Web Browsers

We recommend using Firefox, Opera, or Internet Explorer. These browsers will recognize the Citrix client and load the published application correctly.

Google Chrome and Safari may work but are not ideal. These browsers start the published application using the java plugin. One of the problems with the java plugin is that it does not correctly utilize Ctirix load balancing or recognize which computers are currently in the farm. At times the java plugin connects to computers in the farm and then at other times it tries to connect to servers that are not in the farm.

Policies

Due to the scarcity of session licenses, any Virtual Lab session that is idle for over 24 hours will be automatically logged off so that others can use this resource.

Please do not consider the Virtual Lab a purely distance education tool, or a substitute for the physical computer labs. The Virtual Lab is meant to be used as a convenient supplement to the physical computer labs. It is a student-funded project and thus only students have access. Faculty and staff may pay an annual fee to access the Virtual Lab for course-related purposes; please contact ENS for details.

Office Suite

You will not be able to access Microsoft Office from the Virtual Lab because of the license agreement for those programs. Instead we provide LibreOffice (formerly OpenOffice.)

LibreOffice is the standard office product on the Virtual Computer Lab for word processing, spread sheets, presentations, and HTML editing. It is very important to note that LibreOffice is able to open and save documents that are compatible with Microsoft Office (even MS Office 2010).

Microsoft licensing requires the college to purchase one license for every potential user of the system. In our case, this means purchasing licenses for approximately 2,000 students at $51.26 each, or a total of over $106,000. Unfortunately, Microsoft does not offer concurrent licensing, that is, licensing based on actual number of users, rather than total users. In addition, licenses are only good for a few years and would need to be renewed.

The Virtual Computer Lab is funded by the Engineering Student Technology Committee (ESTC), which decided that $106,000 was too high a price to pay for Microsoft Office. If you have questions about the decision, please contact your representative on the ESTC. Contact information is on the ESTC web page: http://www.engr.colostate.edu/ESTC under the “ESTC membership” section.

For questions about how to use LibreOffice, please see the “Help” menu in LibreOffice. For ease of compatibility, LibreOffice (or OpenOffice) is also installed on every computer in every physical ENS lab, including the Sun Ray thin clients, as well as the Linux Compute Workstations.

Tips & Troubleshooting