PC CPU Requirements

[HaroldB]

Igor,

I tried the PTE5 demos on a different PC, and I'm impressed. It looks like you did great!

I read your comment about video card requirements. How about PC requirements? My PTE PC is ~1gighertz Pentium 3. If I stick a new-ish video card into it, will it work? If not, what are the minimum requirements?

And I assume Windows/ME is good?

H

[Igor]

Harold,

I have second PC at my home with Pentium III Celeron 900 MHz and ATI Radeon 9600XT. Pan/Zoom effects in v5.00 work almost ideally. But with Athlon XP 1,4 GH or Pentium 4 1.4 GHz is better.

At my work I have Athlon XP 1.6 GHz and ATI Radeon 9500 and it works absolutely ideally on any complex Pan/Zoom effects.

No problem with Windows 98/Me

So if you have opportunity, try ATI Radeon 9600 card on your current PC.

p.s. PC where PTE v5.00 works fine also will work with new graphical interface of future Windows Vista which requires modern video card.

[jgayman]

This is where I see the biggest concern. Am I alone in that all of my slide shows are produced and delivered to other users... perhaps 50-100 people. Or are most of you simply creating shows and watching them on your own PC?

Also, the nature of slide shows seems to dictate that they will typically be run on a laptop, probably hooked to a projector and probably in front of a large audience.

So how will you have any idea if your super-duper, wiz-bang show will even play on other peoples equipment? Especially laptops, most do not have the fastest processor or fastest video card.

That was one thing I always liked about PTE; it didn't have huge horsepower requirements and as such it usually played fine on other peoples laptops and desktops.

Ver5 has me somewhat concerned. Yes, I'm looking forward to some of the cool features but the usefulness will be limited if no one else can view your show.

Harold,

I have second PC at my home with Pentium III Celeron 900 MHz and ATI Radeon 9600XT. Pan/Zoom effects in v5.00 work almost ideally. But with Athlon XP 1,4 GH or Pentium 4 1.4 GHz is better.

At my work I have Athlon XP 1.6 GHz and ATI Radeon 9500 and it works absolutely ideally on any complex Pan/Zoom effects.

No problem with Windows 98/Me

So if you have opportunity, try ATI Radeon 9600 card on your current PC.

p.s. PC where PTE v5.00 works fine also will work with new graphical interface of future Windows Vista which requires modern video card.

[HaroldB]

Thanks, Igor!

Since I am not set up now for PTE 5, I am going to wait to look at it until you have a version that runs in some way (albeit slowly) on my type of PC.

I AM concerned about something else that I see has raised other people's concerns in another thread. One of the big advantages of PTE for me has always been that I can send a PTE show to anybody with pretty much any PC and they can watch the show. If possible, I'd suggest that PTE shows with P&Z should still be able to PLAY on low-end video cards (like mine) even if the performance is not smooth. (This is as opposed to the error message I now get). Otherwise, it will become irresistible for me to to use the new P&Z features, and there will be a whole group of people that will not be able to view those PTE shows that I create.

Another point relates to what is possible on a low-end video card like mine. I often see Flash movies run on IE on my PC with very nice and perfectly smooth P&Z effects. Now, I'm sure that there are limitations (perhaps the size of the picture) beyond which that would not work. But if you want and if you still have a low-end PC around, I can email you a URL so you can see how nicely Flash appears to be able to work on that kind of PC.

As to Vista, I actually plan on junking this PC and getting a new replacement PC when Vista is out and stable. It seems like a waste of time to upgrade all my drivers to XP and then again to Vista... I'd just prefer to completely skip XP on this PC.

By skimming some of the threads and looking at some of the demos, it seems that you have done wonderful work with PTE 5. I think that's great, and good luck with getting all the features back into it and getting it to production quality!

H

[Ken Cox]

when we get the option in ver 5 burn it to dvd

or make a vcd and burn to cd

most pc's today will run a movie, and the ones that dont meet the power requirements were never intended to play today's graphics -- they were bought to do office work

ken

[Igor]

Ken,

when we get the option in ver 5 burn it to dvd or make a vcd and burn to cd

Reasonable request! It's in our plans.

Harold,

- With v5.00 final release it will possible to do slide-shows (without Pan/Zoom) which will play ideally smooth on all PCs and all video cards. As earlier with v4.48

- Slide-shows with Pan/Zoom also will play on *any* PC, but not enough smooth (like large Macromedia Flash movies) on old video cards.