Re: [Audacity-devel] system reqs for Windows

[Vaughan J. <va...@au...>]

ga...@au... wrote:
>     | From Vaughan Johnson <va...@au...> 
>     | Fri, 11 May 2007 14:46:17 -0700
>     | Subject: [Audacity-devel] system reqs for Windows
>     | The website Windows download pages 
>     | (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/windows & 
>     | http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/beta_windows) show System 
>     | Requirements as 64MB RAM and 300 MHz processor. I guess that might work 
>     | for Win 98 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/182751), but given that 
>     | Vista minimally requires 512MB RAM and a 1GHz processor 
>     | (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/systemrequirements.mspx) 
>     | -- and I hear it actually needs 4GB RAM to run decently, shouldn't we 
>     | indicate more as a minimum for Audacity? Or figure out different numbers 
>     | for different versions of Windows? How were these numbers determined?
>
> You might even scrape by with XP on our minimum "works best" if you only had
> a single three minute track and turned everything else you could off:
> http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/evaluation/sysreqs.mspx
>
> so our works best has only become totally irrelevant with Vista. As I've said 
> before (given the number of people who ask if Audacity supports Vista or 
> what our requirements are), not everyone looks that far down anyway.
> I'd suggest for the 1.2.6 download page putting the different Windows 
> versions alongside the dowloads as we do in the 1.3.2 download page
> thus:
>
> Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista: Audacity 1.2.6 installer
> ..
> Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista: Audacity 1.2.6 zip file
>
> Get rid of "system requirements" at the bottom of the page and at the top:
>
> Windows
>
> System Requirements (maybe we only need now to say MB and RAM,
> and if we need to go into more meaningful detail for each Windows 
> version, or explain that what you need depends crucially on what you 
> actually want to do with Audacity,  how about a link to it..
>
> Recommended Download...   
>
> Optional downloads...
>
> Same for the 1.3.2 page. 
>
>
>   

Added the Vista stuff, but I don't know what numbers to put on the 
different Windows versions any more than the current global 
"requirements". I think there's a lot of subjectivity in these things -- 
how bad a performance can you tolerate?

And clearly, numbers cited are often bogus. For one example, Microsoft 
says you can run Vista in 512MB RAM, but all the reviews I've seen say 4GB

Can we just get rid of the numbers altogether, and rely on people buying 
computers appropriate to the Windows that comes with them? (*Very* few 
people upgrade Windows OSes for existing machines -- they get the new OS 
when they buy a new machine.)


Also, did a bunch of other changes per recent discussion with Gale (on 
the Bundlers, FAQ, and Contact pages). Please review.


Thanks,
Vaughan