MSU's Academic Computing and Network Services have upgraded a computer program and released a protection CD for quality and safe computer use at MSU.

ANGEL, or A New Global Environment for Learning, has added more features and programs designed to make the program easier to operate.

The program underwent an upgrade from 6.0 to 6.1 last week. An upgrade from 5.6 to 6.0 was performed last May.

"The 5.6 upgrade was a major upgrade, the upgrade to 6.1 was a minor one," said Tom Davis, director of MSU Academic Computing and Network Services. "Students probably won't notice any of these changes."

Mike Buchanon, supervisor for instructional systems, said students will only notice a change if they haven't logged onto the program since the spring upgrade.

"There's added functionality and it looks a little different - it's prettier," Buchanon said. "You can go into a course and there's a tool that allows you to look up words in a dictionary.

"There's broader access to HTML editor which allows you to compose HTML responses to quiz questions and use it almost like a word processor."

Buchanon said the upgrades also fixed some bugs in the program.

The upgrades are done twice a year for feature enhancements and in October and May for safety.

David Gift, vice provost for Libraries, Computing and Technology, said they won't know until this week how the program is really holding up.

"When classes are starting up full time it will be a much greater test," Gift said.

Computing officials also provided students with an MSU Protect Your PC CD, meant to help students prevent their computers from being infected with viruses.

The CD contains the WIndows XP Service Pack 2, also known as the SP2 on their computer, said Richard Wiggins, MSU senior information technologist. The service pack fixes security flaws in Windows XP that could allow virus infection.

"A year ago we were hit bad with the Blaster and Welchia worms and we were concerned if students didn't have these protections we would have the same problems we had a year ago," Wiggins said.

Wiggins also said that Microsoft issued the service pack on Aug. 25, but because MSU officials were unsure of when the packs would be released, they decided to release the CDs themselves.

The disks are available in campus residence halls and Wiggins said students should install the packs as soon as possible.

"Students need to run anti-virus software and keep the Windows updates current," Wiggins said.