An Information Technology Services (ITS) committee is exploring the possibility of decreasing the number of computers in Penn State's open labs by up to 25 percent over the next five years, an ITS official confirmed yesterday.

Committee member Jon Holman said the move to decrease computers would be part of a reorganization of the open labs and had nothing to do with funding.

The reorganized labs would include "collaborative space" where two or more chairs would be stationed in front of one computer for users to work together, and "quick access machines" where users would have to stand to perform quick actions such as checking their e-mail.

Students are using the labs mostly for quick, drop-in access and collaboration on projects, Holman said.

"The recommendations of the committee are to begin to tailor the labs to what the students are using them for," he said.

Holman outlined the committee's plan to the Student Advisory Committee for Information Technology Services, which met yesterday.

The committee also discussed a Sefaster WebMail with fewer bells and whistles and new software that will allow students and their professors to hold videoconferences on their computers.

WebMail2Lite, which is being marketed to users with low bandwidth or dial-up Internet access, may be available to Penn State students as early as the spring semester. It will have less of the graphics and features that WebMail2 has, which ITS officials said would cause it to run faster.

"It's basically WebMail stripped down," said Jim Vuccolo, manager of ITS' software solutions group. "It's going to be a lot quicker."

However, it won't be a replacement for WebMail2.

Vuccolo said that, when logging in to their e-mail boxes, users would be able to choose between the normal WebMail2 and WebMail2Lite.

ITS officials also detailed a new Web-based desktop conferencing program that they said would be available to everyone at Penn State this spring.

Yvonne Clark, an instructional designer for Education Technology Services, said the program, "Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro," would allow users to broadcast audio and video to each other, share files and even work on math problems on a virtual whiteboard -- essentially allowing them to hold meetings without leaving their desks.

"If I needed to edit a paper with somebody, I could copy and paste that in here," Clark said of the program, which has been in the testing stages at Penn State since January. "We could collaboratively edit a document without having to be in the same room."