Hardware and Software Requirements

Software requirements

All platforms (UNIX, Macintosh, and non-Macintosh) will require Netscape or equivalent. The bulk of the software testing has been done on a Macintosh machine with only occasional testing on non-Macintosh machines. We've tested StatVillage with:

Netscape 2.02 and Netscape 3.0.

Some users have reported problems in loading the entire village (see hardware requirements below). A smaller village is also available.

Hardware requirements

Because of widely differing hardware and operating system options found on UNIX workstations, we are unable to outline any hardware requirements with any degree of certainty. However, most workstations usually have large amounts of RAM so we don't expect a problem in running the WWW-browser.

Our student computer lab is equipped with Macintosh PowerPCs running System 7.5 with 16 Mb RAM. We have had no reports of problems from students in loading the entire village on these machines. The authors have also tested the village on a Macintosh 040 machine with 16 Mb RAM and found no problems.

Some students have smaller Macintosh machines at home, and they have experienced problems when they only have 8 Mb RAM. It appears that the System software requires about 4 Mb RAM, Netscape another 4 Mb RAM, leaving insufficient RAM to load the entire village. [These students received a message indicating that Netscape was out of memory.]

We have had only limited experience with non-Macintosh hardware. The most common problem reported is the 8 Mb RAM is again insufficient to run Windows, Netscape, and still have enough memory to load the entire village. The symptoms of the problem include:

Netscape loading about 70% of the document and then freezing.
Netscape loading the entire document and then failing to show the selection boxes.

We recommend that the smaller village be used on these machines.