How low can we really go?

[Judy Perry]

Hi,

I asked this question a while back and I don't think anybody responded so,
at the risk of being a supreme annoyance, I'm going to ask again.

What does everyone -- especially those who actually ship commercial
products done with Rev -- believe to be the lowest common denominator
hardware/software configuration for adequate performance?

My question is prompted by two things.  First, when demo-ing my master's
project (an intro to Rev done in Rev), it was on 128 MB RAM PII machines
running Windows2000.  And performance really sucked.  The same thing on a
G4 128MB RAM Mac in OS 9.2 was tolerable/sucked much less.  Also, I've
noticed that students' files on their PC laptops (unknown processor) with
128 MB RAM run less well than on our lab Macs described above.
Additionally, on said lab Macs, I've noticed that when students are
working on multimedia-intensive stacks, that if they run the
animation/sound/QT movie enough times, the stack simply grinds to a halt
and refuses to play the media; quitting Rev and relaunching seems to solve
the problem, which doesn't occur/occur as frequently with a Mac with 512
MB RAM and OS 10.x.

Second, knowing what this lowest common denominator is is important for
deployment in education (and if anyone wonders why I keep harping on this
market, notice that Rev's ONLY ed bulk license deal on their website is
for K-12/pre-higher ed).  I note that Rev's website notes that compiled
apps can run under Windows 3.11, which I find extremely difficult to
believe.  Even if it does, my experience with 128 MB RAM/PII/Win2000 is
that nobody in their right mind would *want* it to.

Mind you, I'm not *complaining* that it doesn't run well under Win3.11,
merely that it shouldn't be oversold such that people (maybe middle
schools with PI or PII machines running Win95/98) don't buy it thinking it
will be an ideal solution and then be thoroughly disgusted with its
performance or lack thereof.  The other thing is that I don't see any
reference at all to required processor.

I'd like to do whatever I can to make Rev embraceable to the K-12 and
teacher ed community, so understanding just how low we can *reasonably*
go is critically important.

Judy