We will be using the ESSP computer lab in 13/102 on Friday afternoons. It may or may not be possible for you to have access to this room at other times. See the person in charge.

The Math Lab in PS-205 may be available to you free. See the schedule of hours posted by the door. Its computers are already set up with the browsers and plugins listed below. Talk with the person in charge to get a log-in account.

In order to be able to view many of the resources you'll see referred to in this site, you'll need a PC computer with at least a Pentium II [Pentium III better, IV better still] with at least 128 MB RAM and reasonably fast internet connection. You should have Windows 98 or later installed. (I'm not a Mac person, so I can't advise you with any confidence as to what equivalent setup will suffice.) Click on the icons or the URLs supplied below to download the indicated programs. You can also access these sites -- and many more -- from my "Downloads" page. And you'll find scads of other chemistry resources at

http://www.mpcfaculty.net/ron_rinehart/index.html#fastfind .
There are separate pages at this site devoted to organic chemistry and spectroscopy.

Browsers: You will need both:

Microsoft's Internet Explorer, at least v 5.5 with Service Pack 1 installed
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx    ,
If you have Win 2000 or Win XP, the bundled MS IE browser will probably not support MDL Chime™

and

Netscape Communicator 4.7x [do NOT use Netscape 6.x]
http://netscape.1command.com/client_archive47x.phtml .

I normally use IE 5.5 for everyday surfing, but many sites employing MDL's Chime molecular visualization program only work when viewed with Netscape. Netscape 4.76 or 4.77 are the preferred versions. Avoid Netscape 6.x at all costs! Some Chime sites work with either Netscape or IE versions of Chime.

Plugins [free]:

Macromedia Shockwave is available at
http://sdc.shockwave.com/downloads/

MDL Chime 2.6 is available at
www.mdli.com/download/
make sure you download and install both MS IE and Netscape versions.
Some Chime sites work with either Netscape or IE versions of Chime, so it pays to have both ready.

Adobe Acrobat Reader is needed for viewing .PDF files, found at many sites.
Get it at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html .

QuickTime Player
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/
for streaming videos and other applications
be careful when you install this puppy to NOT let it become the default for any file types [GIF, JPEG, etc.] which you don't want it to be!

Real Player 8.0 Basic If you want the free, bare-bones player, click on the long URL below:

http://huxley.real.com/real/player/player.html?src=011214realhome_1,rcahome,011210r1choice_h2,011204rpchoice_c1&dc=121812171216

or go to http://www.real.com/ and follow their links to >> MORE FREE DOWNLOADS >> REALPLAYER >> PREVIOUS VERSIONS >> RealPlayer 8 Basic (on the bottom left side of the last page you reach). Or, for $9.95 get RealOne, a new version with many non-chemistry applications.

Chemistry Drawing Programs:

These are not required for organic chemistry, but you will find it highly desirable to have one or both of these programs installed. MDL IsisDraw is a very user-friendly drawing program, and the structures so produced are easily copied and pasted into MS Word documents, such as lab reports.

MDL IsisDraw™
www.mdli.com/download/
it's a freebie -- jump on it! Versatile and easy to use.

ACD Labs ChemSketch™
http://www.acdlabs.com/download/
In addition to the really useful ChemSketch program with its many features including lots of structure templates and a large library of predrawn structures, you can download a variety of other freeware at this site, including programs for generating and interpreting ¹H and ¹³C NMR spectra and for naming organic compounds.

Cambridge Software ChemOffice™
http://www.cambridgesoft.com/
This one is NOT free, but has a suite of programs that the serious organiker will find really useful, including CS ChemDraw™, CS Chem3D™ and CS ChemFinder™, which is also accessible at their website for those who register. Many other manufacturers offer products as plugins for CS ChemOffice™, which lets you save your structures in a wide variety of formats.

KnowItAll^® Academic Edition from Bio-Rad
http://www.knowitall.com/academic/welcome.html
It's a freebie! Draw structures, perform IR and Raman functional group analysis, access a multi-technique spectral database
with cross-references, and generate high-quality reports.
Minimum System Requirements for KnowItAll: Windows-compatible PC, CD-ROM Drive, Windows 2000, Windows XP Home, or Windows XP Professional operating systems, Pentium III (or equivalent) processor, 128 MB of RAM, 100 MB of free hard disk space

The Chemical Thesaurus by Mark Leach, University of Salford
http://www.meta-synthesis.com
Free, packed with an incredible amount of information on organic and inorganic reactions cross-indexed in a large number of ways.

Not required, not free, but highly recommended:

Chem1 Concept Builder by Stephen Lower at Simon Fraser University
http://www.chem1.com
A very useful set of tutorials at a very reasonable price.
Truly effective and attractive presentations designed to promote real understanding of a wide variety of fundamental chemical concepts. You can download a partially-functional tryout version. If you like it as much as I did, the full version is around thirty dollars -- money very well spent!