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 on how 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.

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

OpenOffice

OpenOffice is now 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 OpenOffice is able to open and save documents that are compatible with Microsoft Office (even MS Office 2007).

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 OpenOffice, please see the “Help” menu in OpenOffice. For ease of compatibility, 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.