Journal Post 9

It has been a long time since my last post so I have quite a bit to update. The main work that has been done over the month of February has been gathering the data on the repurposed workstations. The data that has been gathered has not been what I was expecting. The repurposed machines seem to have the same (if not more) energy output than the previous workstations the users were using. All of the repurposed tests have been finished at this point and the data can be found in the spreadsheet (here). We also received the thin clients that we will be using for the third part of the test this week they are HP t5335 thin clients. They come with 36 Watt power supplies and the full specs can be found in this pdf (HP t5335 specs). The things that still need to be accomplished include;

• Submit abstract for UMCUR presentation (poster session)
• Finish thin client testing
• Revise end of study questionnaire
• Continue analysis of data 
• Calculate metric tons of CO2 based on avg KwH measurements
• Expand data to entire university system
• Figure out how many total workstations there are on the university campus (and what category each falls into). 
• Define categories for study group
• Kiosk, Faculty (power user), Data entry
• Combine server and users data to get power output with server
• Will be done using different amount of users on single server
• Based on data collected server runs at same power level no matter how many users are logged in simultaneously 
• Create graphs to so each user on different type of workstation

Today I will be working all day to start to make sense of the data that I have collected. I will be creating multiple spreadsheets and updating the calendar to reflect the current status of the data collection. When I make significant progress I will post again with links to the spreadsheets as well as the updated calendar. the end survey should also be completed by the end of the day. I will be more diligent at staying up to date with the blog in the future. 

Journal Post 8

It has been a busy couple of weeks for me so I have not been able to update the blog as often as I had hoped. I have done quite a bit of work on my research project since the last post, one of the main updates to the blog are the new calendar that I have embedded which shows the tentative schedule for testing including the weeks that each user will be testing each system. I have been using the repurposed system exclusively at work and have been keeping notes on the overall functionality of the the system and user experience. I will post the results when i have finished testing. The main things that I have accomplished since my last post include;

• I have a new project participate
• Griz Central student kiosks
• On 24/7 all they do is access internet and print
• Started David's testing on repurposed machine on 1/31/2012
• Started control test on Mary's PC on 1/24/2012
• Completed control test on 1/31/2012 
• results in spreadsheet (here)
• Researched thin clients and decided on either of two models 
• HP Smart Client t5335z
• HP Smart Client t5565z
• Specifications can be found (here)
• researched definitions of the information (knowledge) worker
• Almost everything I found referenced Peter Drucker (Peter Drucker Wikipedia)
• I need to find more information 
• Ubuntu 9.10 USB boot drives are stable and functioning properly 
• Sound is still not working
• All programs and applications installed successfully on server and are available to all users
• Microsoft Project and Visio were not able to be installed due to licensing issues
• We will attempt to install directly on profile that needs access to these programs
• I am currently working on a survey to hand to all participates to describe user experience after using repurposed machine
• I will post survey as soon as it is finished and results as they come in 
• Updated spreadsheet with computer models and PSU sizes 
• Decide whether I want to do a poster or oral presentation
• I love the visual idea of the poster but I would also like to be able to put my project into words so....

I should have more time this week to work on the project because I have taken Wednesdays off from work with that sole purpose.

Tentative Calendar for Remaining Tests