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Home My WebLink About1997-06-26 Technical Committee MinutesCOMMUNICATIONS TECHNICAL MINUTES Jure 26, 1997 Committee Members Present. Al Douglas, Brad Moore, T.J. Martial, Shelby Sutherbmg, Jim Greer, Dave Little Other Staff Present: Edward Barrett, Randy Harriman Minutes from June 11, 1997 meeting accepted COMMITTEE REPORTS mcfion items) 1. Al Douglas talked with Unicel about cell phones. They have in place a Municipality Package fm phones. It is a $39.95 monthly access but there are other prices that can be incorporated based on the other plans. This package includes a cell phone, 1500 minutes M month, free statewide hill free calling, free voice mail, two call-waifing, and call -forwarding. 2. Brad Moore talked with Cellular One in thein Ellsworth office. The City of Bangor is outside thein service area, so a charge would be added Brad has a copy of the rate sheet and other information that was available from Cellular One. Brad did not go into a lot of detail because the City is not within thew service area. 3. Aron Larson and Dave Little looked into information regarding notebooks. Dave looked at notebooks that ranged in price from $1,100 to $1,600. Thesecouldperfornthe necessary functions such as email, fax capability, etc. You could add items, so the overall cost could be $2,000 or more. Dave made a list of five that he felt were good machines. There was a least a gigabyte on the hard drive. Four of the five ate pentiums andoneisa586. Some come with their ownmodems, but special cards would be needed for Councilors to sign into Pentamation or to network them. Dave also looked at PC' companion machines. The price mage is between $300-600, which may be a less expensive way to go. Some of these machines have fax capability and e-mail. 4. T.J. Mounted looked into Web Sites. T.J. fond some cities roughly the population of Bangor dust are using a web -based system of keeping their Council and citizens informed. Bellingham, WA sent a Council Agenda that was published and the second page showed the hyper finks. There is a short descriptive of the Council item and you can click on the item you want and then hyper link to that exact document or download the document to your PC. This agenda was about the thickness of our agenda. They do not use cell phones, they are strictly a web -based system. Brownwood. TX has a bulletin board button where there are several hot topics. Council members can communicate with each other, staff, citizens, etc. Clarksburg, VN had something called the "weekly hot issue". Bellingham also said that the Council received their own Internet access so they could research any other topic. Further discussion is needed to determine goals and objectives of Web Site. There is a variety of what different cities may be doing on the web. Ed Barrett likes the capability ofE-mailing right off the site. T.J. liked the Brownwood, TX bulletin board section with specific topics for conferencing that Councilors, citizens and staff could participate in. Once something like this is established, a provider would be needed to maintain the web site. 5. Shelby Sutherburg and Aron Larson checked into the Cable information. Shelby explained that the cable Information is all in the works and Erik Sturnpfel did not have any information at this time. Ed Beach explained thm Erik bas sent out a memo to several people asking for their input on what they would like to sea from our cable. provider. At a minimum, them will be a fiber optic drop at every building. Ed Barrett suggested that if members of flus committee have ideas or suggestions, put it on paper and give to Erik and perhaps ask Erik to come to a meeting for discussion. b. Bill Eastman looked into servers. Bill was unable to attend this meeting, however he gave the information to Al. Staff would be looking at the same type of box as what we currently have (Alpha Box). The City has had this box fail years and a driver has been put into this box and Bill informed Al that there have been no problems as far as major downtime or problems with the software. It is felt that this would be adequate because staff is familiar with this equipment Two types ofpossible softwme: Novell is a popular network software that is available. Omupwise is another software application. Bill will continue to work on getting this information together. 7. Jim Orem looked into E-mail information. For Lotus, CC Mail, and Microsoft Outlet, the price was around $90 each, less if you buy m multiple. If there is going to be net connection, we will need a browser, either Netscape or bound Explorer. Both of these packages come with built in E-mail. Explorer is free which comes with Microsoft Outlet Express. Jim has used both and feels they would suit our needs. Randy Hartmann pointed out them are devices that combine fax capability, voice mail, and e-mail that all go onto your server so they can be accessed either by phone or by computer. Equipment Accessories One the devices are determined, those devices are going to need accessories. Operstor's terminal - Bill Eastman has been asked to associate an opemto2s terminal with a server and based on what was talked about, an individual would be needed to maintain that amount. NEW BUSINESS value of the System: What is the long term invesunent, life of the equipment, and its use? How easy will it be to maintain and upgrade devices? Documentation: Maintain documentation on the device. What is the basic design of the core system? How ate we going to structure that system? How will it control to the Mount system? What will be put on that system in terms of the system software? Are we going m make this our software home base and get away from everyone have then own software on their own machines so we could go with a system approach? Once this is decided, there will be parameters on what is needed in terms of equipment Randy Harrimm suggested giving the parameters to some vendors and lel them come back to os with cost, a demonstration, etc. Ed Barrett suggested buying software that everyone else buys and is upgraded regularly. If you store your documents on individual machines, and those machines are on-line, then other people in the system aren't going to be able to access the document If you store all your documents on the server, Nen all the documents will be available as long as the d'Irectones are accessible. The person with a lap top would dial in when they want to write something or change something they. One suggestion is to use Novell. Novell is based on DOS. DOS only has ahandful of permission codes. The server is the most important piece of equipment. Staff suggests not changing the server that we have, and just add another alpha box. Software: Network software is needed to access the server. The other part of the package istheapplications. The items that will be needed are word processing, spreadsheets, e- mail and Internet With a Windows NT system, you can get Microsoftoffice for $120- I30 per copy and you won't need a network addition If you put this in an NT platform, .you have included in the NT server a web server so that you already have your web basis on-line. If you go with Office 97, it already has the Internet cmmectum. Bffi and Al will continue to look at the deck Alpha box and will look up information regarding NT and become more familiar with it and will visit sites that use a Windows NT environment If we go with software on server, does this hamper how many people can be on it at the .same time? If you are reaching the max number, it could slow up your system. When retrieving a file, saving a file, there maybe a slight delay. There may be a way to control the number of people using a program at my given time. Randy Harriman will set up and rum a copy of Office 97 at the next meeting. Mother issue is connection. There are a lot of people numing software who aren't on the system. There should be avisual aid to show what we have, what we need, who else needs to be on it, one. Security issues also need to be discussed. Should certain applications be restricted. Next Meeting: 1. Try to clarify the design of the core system 2. Hardware 3. Software 4. Issues about netwmlcmg (who's oninol on and who should he on)