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- Personally owned computers and/or off campus MIT owned computers
- All home networks and networks through third party providers like Comcast, Verizon, RCN, etc
- MIT computers on campus that belong to employees who are not in our supported areas
- Non-MIT owned computers
- How to use your software (MS Word, Filemaker, Adobe Creative Suite, etc) (lynda.mit.edu has great resources to teach you how to use software)
(Exceptions are Email (Apple Mail/Outlook/OWA), VPN, Kerberos Extras, and CertAid)
We may be able to assist with basic questions for other software if we have knowledge but we do not have expertise using many of these programs and we are not programmers. Odds are you will probably know your software much better than we do. - How to use any of the MIT academic or administrative web-based systems (Stellar, Cognos, etc). We don't have access to them so we don't know how to use them.
We're always happy to take a look at an issue if you'd like us to give you our insights. Business help can be found by directly callling the Help Desk at 3-1101 and asking for "Business Help". - Setting up or building websites
- Fix broken printers (for printer repairs, KSL is the official MIT printer repair vendor and can be reached at ksl@mit.edu)
- Fix broken computer hardware (Macintosh, Dell, and Lenovo Thinkpad machines can be brought to IS&T's walk-in help desk in E17-110 for repair)
- Physical transport of any machines to and from IS&T for repair
- We are not a maid service and do not clean keyboards, monitors, windows or desks or move furniture
- We do not work off campus
- We cannot do your work for you. We can are always happy to help empower you to do your job by showing you what you need to do. For example, if you need to move 100,000 emails from your online email account to a local folder, we can show you how to do that a month at a time with the first month but you will have to spend the time to actually do it for the other 119+ months. Projects like this are not fast and can take days, if not weeks to complete.
The MIT Way
MIT is an engineering and science institution that happens to have a phenomenal humanities and social sciences program. Unlike all other institutions of higher learning, MIT places no restrictions or limits on what tools, software, or hardware can be used by the community. This creates an open ended unrestricted computing environment with numerous support challenges.
- No one can know everything. There is just too much new technology, software, and hardware out there with more coming to market monthly.
- Technology constantly changes. Just when you think you know one type of system or piece of equipment really well, a new one comes along and replaces it with all new bugs, problems, and incompatibilities.
- As a technology-based institute, the MIT culture assumes its users have a higher level of understanding of technology than may be the case. Consequently all development of tools and technology support are often designed with this assumption. The MIT culture assumes members of the community have the aptitude and desire to figure things out.
- Though the model in SHASS is a higher level customer service model than exists for many parts of the Institute, we have limited resources and rely heavily on our Section Liaisons to coordinate appointments during our supported section times.
II) Support Blocks
Each supported area has been assigned a single support block (morning or afternoon) where Dan or I will come on site to work on any and all IT problems.
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