Information Commons equipment
and software 
- CD-R/RW Drives
All computers in the I.C. computer lab are equipped with drives and
software that can record CD-R and CD-RW discs in a variety of formats.
You must supply your own discs. If you are producing a disc to share
with another user or use on another computer and are unsure what format
to use, one of the lab assistants can help.
- PowerPoint, Front Page 2000,
Acrobat Reader 5.0
All computers in the I.C. computer lab have PowerPoint, Front Page 2000
for web editing, and Acrobat Reader 5.0 for viewing PDF files on the
web.
- Color and black-and-white
laser printers
All lab computers can print to both black-and-white and color laser
printers. The b/w laser printers are equipped with staplers and collators
similar to those on copy machines. Cost is factored into your campus-wide
student printing account -- first 200 pages printed per semester are
free, subsequent printing is 8 cents per page. Color laser printing
is charged against the same account, and is 90 cents per page.
- Four Windows Multi-Media
authoring stations. In addition to the software found on other lab computers
(PowerPoint, Microsoft Office, etc.) these are equipped with:
- HP 7450C color scanners
Up to 1200x1200dpi, with 50-sheet auto-feed (for scanning long documents)
and slide scanner attachments. Software included with the scanner
makes it possible to scan a long documents in batch, rather than
one page at a time.
- I.R.I.S. OCR ("Optical Character Recognition") Software
This software is available whenever you scan a document. It will
try to convert words in the image you scanned from bitmaps to text,
so that you can later edit the text in a word processor or desktop
publishing program. If you plan to save a scanned document as a
PDF file (using Acrobat 5.0 below), first doing OCR on it will make
the PDF file smaller (faster to download), but it may also introduce
errors that you may want to edit first.
- DVD drives
In addition to CD-R/RW drives (DVD drives are not writable)
- Acrobat 5.0
This is the full version of Acrobat that allows you to produce PDF
versions of files you have created in other software, such as Microsoft
Word. PDF's are typically used for distributing documents that you
plan for people to print out, or that you need to distribute both
in print and online. If you are producing a document for people
to read and use online, you may want to consider producing it as
a web siteinstead of a PDF file.
- Adobe PhotoShop 6.0
Software for editing bitmapped image files, such as scanned photographs.
Files can be saved in formats used for printed documents, or for
web graphics.
- Adobe Illustrator 10.0
Software for drawing line art and creating sophisticated text effects,
either for printed documents or web graphics. Uses vector graphic.
These images can be used by themselves, or pulled into Adobe PhotoShop/Freehand
and combined with bitmapped images.
- Adobe Page Maker 7.0
Desktop publishing software. Used to create complex layouts combining
text and graphics in ways difficult or impossible to do with most
word process software.
- Microsoft Front Page 2000
This is another Web page and site management editig program.
- Macromedia DreamWeaver 4.0
Web page editing and web site management tool. (If you need instructions
for how to create a personal student web page on the TCU network,
see: Web
Account at TCU.) If you are using Fireworks or Flash to create
graphics/animation effects, it will be easier to to incorporate
these into your complete pages with DreamWeaver than with other
editing software.
- Macromedia Fireworks 4.0
Software for creating/editing graphics for web sites, and creating
script effects, such as roll-over images. If you are editing graphics
for a web site instead of a printed document, you may wish to use
Fireworks as an alternative to PhotoShop.
- Macromedia Freehand 10.0
Drawing software with capabilities similar to Adobe Illustrator
(described above).
- Macromedia Flash 5.0
Software for creating complex animation and sound effects for web
pages. (People viewing the page must have downloaded and installed
a compatible version of the free Flash viewer browser plug in.)
equipment
available from the Center for Instructional Services
The Center
for Instructional Services has projectors, screens, and other
presentation equipment available for checkout and use on campus. Plan
to reserve equipment well in advance of when you need to use it. To
find out if what you need is available, call: (817) 257-7121.
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Media
Equipment & Software