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To determine whether your computer meets the requirements below, just download the
Road Runner Qualifier, or compare your computer to the requirements below.
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Windows
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Macintosh
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Minimum
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Recommended
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Minimum
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Recommended
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Processor
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Pentium Class 75 MHz
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Pentium 166 or faster
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PowerPC 75 MHz
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PowerPC 180 MHz recommended
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RAM
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32 MB (64 MB for Windows 2000)
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64 MB or more
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32 MB physical RAM
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64 MB or more
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Hard Disk Space
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110 MB available
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150 MB available
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30 MB available
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50 MB available
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Operating System
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Windows 98, or NT or Workstation 4.0 w/ SP3 (SP5 or higher recommended), or ME, or
2000. (Windows 95 best effort support 1.)
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MacOS 8.61 and higher (OSX - best support effort)2
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MacOS 8.6
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Expansion
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Available USB port, or Ethernet card2 with RJ45 connector, or
Open slot and free compatible IRQ.
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Ethernet card3 with RJ45 connector, or Open slot
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Other
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CD-ROM drive required. Sound card and speakers recommended.
SVGA or XGA graphics card recommended.
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CD-ROM drive required, sound card and speakers recommended, 16-bit color required 32-bit recommended
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Footnotes
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1 Microsoft no longer offers phone support for Windows 95.
Only online support is available. Road Runner supports Windows 95 on a
best effort basis, but cannot guarantee optimal performance.
2 The card must be installed and available for Road Runner use.
Road Runner is intended for stand-alone computers; for
information on local networking capability.
Please note that your computer system, as well as certain broadband
Internet services, may require resources beyond Road Runner's minimum standards.
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1 Road Runner supports earlier releases on a best-effort basis,
but cannot guarantee optimal performance.
2 Road Runner supports OSX on a best-effort basis, but cannot
guarantee optimal performance.
3 The card must be installed and available for Road Runner use.
Road Runner is intended for stand-alone computers.
Please note that your computer system, as well as certain broadband
services, may require resources beyond Road Runner's minimum standards.
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 n
theory, any computer can use Road Runner. In practice,
more than any other factor, your computer will affect the
speed with which web pages appear, video streams, and files
download. In other words, if your computer is slow by
today's standards, you probably won't be happy with Road
Runner. Therefore, we won't install Road Runner on any
computer that does not meet the minimum requirements listed
above.
These requirements also come into play when we load the
Internet Explorer web browser and Outlook Express email
software on your computer during your Road Runner
installation. While we don't require that you use these
software applications, our installers require them to test
the performance of Road Runner and set up your account and
your computer must be powerful enough to run the most recent
version of both products.
To understand why your computer plays such an important role
in determining your speed, consider that every web page you
view is composed of dozens of text and graphics files. Each
of these files has to be downloaded in chunks no bigger than
1.5K, stitched back together, and stored on your hard disk.
Then the HTML describing the web page has to be parsed, the
graphics decompressed and formatted for display, and
scripts--if any are included--have to be run.
More than any other activity, web browsing puts your
computer through its paces, placing high demands on your
processor, RAM, hard disk, graphics accelerator, and
networking hardware. If any of those are below par, or if
the software controlling these systems is configured
improperly or corrupted in some way, your speed will suffer.
In many cases, our customers have found that reinstalling
their web browser or operating system improved their speed
dramatically.
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Support: 877-WWW-FAST 