Why 7Mb. [Was: Why 10 hours for a newbie and 30 days for a "programmer"]

[Alex Tweedly]

I decided it was time for a change of subject line ....

At 12:14 03/09/2004 +0200, Wolfgang M.Bereuter wrote:

>Thanks for you offer Chipp,
>I m not Keith, but I would like to ask you too, because of your clear 
>answers. Some newbies here asked me. We are from an eastern ex Comecon 
>country (Ukraine), therefore we prefer Dreamcard (the price of course). 
>But... Why does the same testfile (they mean: stack) have 7 MB with the 
>Dreamcard player and only about 2-3 MB as a rev build standallone (They 
>know my test apps). "How should we explain this to our costumers, if they 
>have Internet, in Ukraine, which have mostly Modems (pay for DL-time)? 
>Cant be the Startup-screen?

I'm not Chipp - but I'll take a shot at this question.

Why 7Mb for a player vs 2-3Mb as a standalone ?

Because the player needs to incorporate ALL the capabilities of RR, so that 
it can support all possible stacks. A standalone needs only the parts it 
needs :-)

What about my download times (and costs) ?

The best answer here is to separate the player and the individual 
applications you are distributing. (Of course, make it easy to get 
both).  Subsequent applications (or subsequent releases of the same one, 
should there ever be a bug) can then be "stack-only" - typically 100-500K 
rather than 2-3Mb. So once your users have downloaded 3 or 4 
applications/versions, they will have a net savings (7+4*1/2 < 4 *2.5), and 
from there the savings just keep growing.

There is also the opportunity to provide a different distribution mechanism 
for the player, in preparation for downloads (e.g. put it on a CD, perhaps 
with other useful and freely distributable software, to be given to users 
**).  This would make the connection/download times much smaller than they 
are now, provided the CD has already been obtained.

*** I have not checked whether RunRev encourages, or even allows, this - 
please check that before doing any such thing !!


-- Alex.