For the SPRQL, we use Dell PCs with most of the testing. These PCs can be involved in the behavioural lab and the psychophysiology labs.

• The PCs are ordered directly through USHOP (processed through account information with the lab manager).
• The PCs take 1-3 days to arrive at the destination.
• PCs need to be formatted by IT departments to include Microsoft Office among other licensed programs by the university.
• These towers will have Windows XP installed, however the university as well as Microsoft has stopped support on these systems; meaning no online updates will be provided for these systems. Therefore, they must be closely monitored for software and hardware issues.
• The larger towers with more RAM and hardware capacity are used for psychophysiology recordings (“acquisition”).
• The smaller towers are used for either behavioural lab testing or stimuli (“presentation”).

For the PC towers in the lab, note that they should always be turned off before leaving the lab. This allows the hard drives to be preserved for a much longer time than if they were left on the entire night. Currently, this lab does not do automatic data backups or remote accessing for the PCs; so it’s optimal to shut them off before leaving the lab.

Hard drive notes:

• If your hard drives are the less expensive, but higher capacity SATA drives: these drives will not last as long and may be prone to failure the longer they are left on and the more work put on them (because these drives spin, so they succumb to “wear-and-tear”)
• If your hard drives are the more expensive, but lower capacity Solid State Drives (SSD): these drives will last much longer, and are not as prone to failure because they do not spin to write data. However, they are very expensive and will require more memory to be added (and they may also have OS limits; operating system limits).