Hardware Requirements for Academy Software
COMPUTER SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS ARE CHANGING EFFECTIVE APRIL 7, 2010
The Academy is dedicated to using the latest technology to enhance your Estate Planning Practice; therefore the Academy will be offering the most up-to-date, powerful marketing tools that take advantage of the latest Windows technology. This will continue into the future, and it is imperative that your systems are able to handle the increased processing and memory requirements in order to take advantage of the newest technology.
There are three potential systems you will be using when working with the Academy:
- CounselPro™ - encompassing marketing and client management and the assembly of your Estate planning documents
- Microsoft Word based documents - these files work only with Microsoft Office Suite 2003 or 2007. There has been minimal testing on Microsoft Office 2010 Beta version but all Technical writings indicate is should be fully compatible. On-line collaboration has not been evaluated for CounselPro™ produced documents
- The Academy's Member Website
Requirements Snapshot
Minimum Acceptable Existing Workstation
O/S - 32 bit
CPU - 2 GHz
RAM - 1 GByte
Hard Disk Drive - 1 GIG available
Anti-Virus - Microsoft Security Essentials (free)
Office Suite - MS-Office 2003 or newer (one workstation must have MS-Access)
Minimum Acceptable New Workstation Purchases ($700 + MS Office)
O/S - 32 bit Windows 7
CPU - duo-core 2 GHz minimum
RAM - 2 GIG
Hard Disk Drive - 10 GIG available
FSB - 1 GHz minimum
Anti-Virus - Microsoft Security Essentials (free)
Office Suite - MS-Office 2003 or newer
21" Widescreen monitor
Recommended Purchase ($1200 + MS Office)
O/S - 64 bit Windows 7
CPU - Quad Core 2.5 GHz minimum (or AMD equivalent)
RAM - 6 or 8 GIG
Hard Disk Drive - 500+ GIG
FSB - 1333 MHz or faster
Anti-Virus - Microsoft Security Essentials (free)
Office Suite - MS-Office 2003 or newer
Dual digital monitors
Networking Technology:
Minimum - Fast Ethernet (100BaseT) Requires CAT5 or CAT5e wiring
Recommended - Gigabyte (1000BaseT) Require CAT6 wiring
Also acceptable is Wireless N (300MBps)
Introduction
Not everyone in your office will be using all features of the above systems, however, every staff member will be utilizing email applications, word processing, and miscellaneous other features, requiring some level of the Microsoft Office Suite. You and your key staff (e.g. Marketing Coordinator) will use the Internet frequently. When planning the computer systems and network you need, first evaluate what each staff member will be doing in their daily jobs, and make sure the computer workstation you provide has sufficient resources and software for them to complete their tasks with minimal delays. You should plan your network for optimum efficiency for each workstation. The Academy requires that you have a qualified IT consultant either on staff or on contract. The following is a list of computer requirements to satisfy all of the above systems.
Workstation Requirements
Operating System:
Any new computer purchase will come with Windows 7. 32-bit computers are available, but their supply seems to be drying up and typically you can purchase a 64-bit computer cheaper than a 32-bit computer. CounselPro™ and MS-Office 2003 and MS-Office 2007 are 32-bit programs. MS-Office 2010 is 64-bit capable. CounselPro™ will operate on Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7, 32-bit or 64-bit.
CPU:
How fast do you process instructions inside of the computer? The higher the number, the faster the instructions are processed. Likewise, the more CPUs you have (cores) the more you can do at one time, hence the "duo-core" and the "quad-core" with 2 cpu or 4 cpu respectively. However, just like driving your car, there are some speed bumps along the way. The first speed bump is the Front Side Bus (FSB), that part inside of the computer where the data moves around from place to place. If the FSB is slow, it doesn't matter how capable the CPU is, the data will only move as fast as the FSB allows it to. The 2nd speed bump is the hard disk drive and the "access rate" which determines how fast you can read or write from/to the hard disk drive. Old hard disk drives were typically in the 15ms range and modern day hard disk drives are in the 5-8ms range, almost twice as fast. The last speed bump is multi-tasking capability, or the ability to run 2, or more, processes simultaneously. CounselPro™ is not capable of multi-tasking or multi-threading. However, if you have multiple cores in your CPU, you can have 2 programs running simultaneously, such as CounselPro™ and MS-Outlook.
RAM:
Since CounselPro™ is not the only software running on the computer, the requirements that CounselPro™ imposes have to be added to the requirements the Operating System and other running software have. Typically you have the following software running simultaneously: Operating System, MS-Word, MS-Outlook, CounselPro™. Based on some standard numbers, that is 512 + 256 + 256 + 512 = 1536 MB of RAM, or rounded up to the next available level is 2000 MB or 2 GB.
We learn by example, so let's take a brief look at how the computer operates. You have a 32-bit computer, single core CPU, 1 GB of RAM, running the operating system, CounselPro™, MS-Outlook, and MS-Word. You are looking at CounselPro™ and decide you want to look at your MS-Outlook Inbox, so you click on it. With 1 Gbyte of RAM occupied by the operating system and CounselPro™, you have no place to put MS-Outlook. The operating system must remove CounselPro™ from RAM and load in MS-Outlook so you can see it. The data is moved to the hard disk drive and the MS-Outlook data is retrieved from the hard disk drive. This takes time. You want to go back to CounselPro™ and the computer must take the MS-Outlook data and put it back to the hard disk drive and retrieve the CounselPro™ data, once again time. If you had more RAM, then you would not have to move any data to the hard disk drive, just read it from a different area of RAM. Speed of the components is what makes the additional RAM most desirable. A hard disk drive at 15 milli-second access rate is no where near as fast as RAM running at 600 nano-second access rate. Hence, our minimum RAM requirement of 2 GB.
Anti-Virus:
CounselPro™ V6.0 has been tested with all currently certified Windows 7 Anti-Virus software manufacturers. When properly set up, CounselPro™ works satisfactorily. Windows Security Essentials has replaced Windows Live OneCare and is free. However, Windows Security Essentials is only anti-virus software, whereas the other Anti-Virus software developers are providing “packages” with additional capabilities to maintain and monitor your computer. It is up to the end user to pick the software of their choice and ensure that it is properly setup, by a qualified IT person, to give satisfactory performance. For those without access to an IT person, the Academy recommends Windows Security Essentials as there is no setup required. There is other software available to maintain and monitor your equipment that is operator friendly.
Networking:
Obviously you want to share all of your data with a single copy of the CounselPro™ program, and to do this, you must be networked. There are 2 types of networks: dedicated server and peer-to-peer.
Dedicated server - heavy duty built computer, designed to run 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, with approximately 30,000 hours between failures (around 3.5-4 years). These computers are “beefed up” including everything from a heavy duty case (or rack mount), to extra cooling fans, large capacity power supply, etc. - a real work horse. They require special “server” software, but provide the utmost in security and data management, however, they require a highly trained individual to install and maintain them. They require 1 license (called CALS) for each simultaneous user.
Peer-to-Peer - there are 2 ways of operating a peer-to-peer network: dedicated, and used. Dedicated means the computer does nothing except act as the centralized repository and data traffic cop for your network. Used means you are also using this centralized repository and data traffic cop as a workstation for one of your employees. Either situation utilizes a standard desktop computer and makes it a shared centralized repository and data traffic cop. Windows Small Business Server (SBS) was built from Windows NT Server software. Windows Vista and Windows 7 was built from Windows NT server software, so they enjoy similar user and data security capabilities as dos the SBS.
Other Workstation Requirements:
Virus Protection Software - We are currently recommending Microsoft Security Essentials which is a free antivirus program readily available for download from Microsoft. However, you may use the antivirus program of your choice. Just be sure that the internal file checking functionality is turned off or it will seriously degrade performance.
Regular System Maintenance - This will need to be done on each computer, including ScanDisk, registry cleaner, general computer cleanup and Defrag (or Diskeeper), performed on a regular basis (we recommend at least weekly). A good stand-alone utility to accomplish this maintenance is TuneUp Utilities 2010.
Members are required to have both an Internal and an External Backup solution and to include all Academy software files/folders in the scheduled backup. For External Backup options, we recommend the MozyPro online backup utility. To sign up through the Academy, click on the following link: http://members.aaepa.com/forms/mozypro_signup.asp