The prevailing complaint about the new WISER system, as one student puts it, is of “the annoyance of having to learn something new,” but most people can’t point out anything specific they dislike about the updated version launched before winter break.”It was a little hard at the beginning to figure out what’s going on. It was confusing. Eventually I figured it out and it was pretty much okay,” said Liz, a freshman.The UMass campuses in Boston, Lowell and Dartmouth purchased the WISER system from Oracle in 2000. After years of preparations, WISER 8.0 was introduced to replace the schools’ own outdated systems in 2005. Previously, each department used a different computerized system for its services, whereas WISER provided a centralized place for students to conveniently access multiple services, including financial aid, enrollment and academic records.When the 9.0 version of WISER came out two years ago, Oracle announced that it would no longer provide support for the obsolete versions. This left the three UMass campuses with a choice to purchase the upgrade or take on the maintenance of the old system, either through the IT office or by a third party.In the end, all three campuses chose to buy the new version, as it was the more economical option. David Cesario, who led the launch of the new WISER at UMB, explained the decision,”It was determined that it was more cost effective and safer to continue to make use of the latest version as it would give our users the most updated product on the market. This is especially true with the financial aid module as yearly updates are critical to keep all federal regulations in sync.”Although many of the options remained the same, WISER 9.0 does have a different interface and some new features.”[WISER 9.0] incorporates many of the features commonly found on most web applications plus things that the various user groups were asking to be added to the system,” Cesario wrote.The Academic Planner and the Shopping Cart are both new features that allow students to plan their schedule for the semester as they browse the catalogue before actually enrolling in classes.One part of WISER remained untouched for UMB students, the Degree Audit Report, although both the Dartmouth and Lowell campuses switched to an updated version.”We have kept the degree audit system we have used for many years as we believe it is still a much better product than what is currently available through Oracle,” Cesario explained.