Computer

  • Intel Pentium based system with a speed of at least 300MHz
  • Microsoft Windows 3.1, Windows-95b, Windows-98SE, Windows-NT or later
  • at least 32Mb of RAM if Microsoft Windows 3.1 or Windows-95
  • at least 64Mb of RAM if Microsoft Windows-98SE
  • at least 128Mb of RAM if Microsoft Windows-NT, Windows-2000, Windows-XP etc
  • We have had some success with Apple Mac's with Windows Emulation installed

We would recommend an Intel Celeron 1.7GHz computer with 256Mb RAM and a 40Gb Hard Disk. You don't need a Pentium III or Pentium IV computer as the main difference between the Celeron and the Pentium IV is that the Pentium IV is designed to play games and to have increased multimedia performance - neither of which is required for most business uses.

If you have multiple computers in a network that you wish to use to access our software then you must install our software on each of the machines that are to access the program (plus any file server that you may be using). Make sure that you install the software to the default location (as suggested in the install program) on all machines otherwise the automatic program updating over your network won't work.

Printer

  • HP Laserjet Laser Printer or Compatible (not a GDI Printer)
  • Most Modern Inkjet Printers (colour or B/W)
  • Printer connection via Parallel Printer Port (not USB)

MAKE SURE THAT YOU CONNECT YOUR PRINTER VIA A PARALLEL PORT CABLE AND *** NOT *** A USB CABLE as you will not be able to print from our software if you use a USB connected printer. We are working on trying to find a solution to this but at this time there doesn't seem to be a solution.

We would recommend an Epson Stylus C70 inkjet printer (if you want to be able to print in colour) or ANY Hewlett Packard Laser Printer (if you only want to print in black and white). Note that the ink in inkjet printers evaporates even if you DON'T use the printer while the toner in a laser printer doesn't and so unless you want to print in colour a laser printer will be more economical to run.

Make sure if you buy an inkjet printer that the printer takes separate ink cartridges for each colour and a separate cartridge for black ink so that when you run our of one colour ink you only need to replace that one colour ink cartridge. Most of the cheaper printers have multiple ink colours in the one cartridge so that if you run out of magenta ink you have to throw away the remaining yellow and cyan inks in that multi-colour cartridge. Some inkjet printers just have one cartridge which contains the black ink as well as the three colour inks so when you run out of black ink you have to throw the coloured ink out too - even if you haven't used ANY of the colour ink!

Which version of Windows to use

You can run our software on Windows-95, Windows-98, Windows-98SE, Windows-NT, Windows-2000 or Windows-XP. We recommend that you install and use Windows-XP Home (there is no need for Windows-XP Professional for small businesses - this is ONLY for large corporate businesses and to our knowledge it has NO advantage for small business - it's just twice the price.

The differences between XP-Home and XP-Pro are...

  • No support in XP-Home for Advanced Management Features such as Remote Desktop (which allows an XP-Pro computer to remotely access another computer in a similar fashion to PC-Anywhere or Co-Session) and Remote Administration (which allows a an XP-Pro computer to remotely configure another computer through the network). Active directory Domains, Group policies, Intelli-Mirror configuration and change management and roaming user profiles.

  • No support to connect to a domain controller (only useful in LARGE networks)

  • No multi-Processor Support (only useful for corporate server computers in large networks)

  • No Dynamic Disk Support (only useful for corporate server computers in large networks)

  • No Web Server (only useful if you want your computer to be an Internet Web Server to locally host your own web site on your own computer which would need to be ALWAYS connected to the Internet to make it worth while - and your ISP may NOT allow you to do this anyway).

  • No support for encryption or file-level access management (only useful for corporate server computers in large networks)

  • No support for multi-language installations (only useful if you speak two languages and want the windows messages to appear in a different language depending on who is logged into computer)

  • No support for Advanced Network Features such as SNMP, IPSec, Simple TCP/IP Agent, Client Services for Novell Netware, Network Monitor or roving features (only useful for corporate server computers in large networks)

One other thing that you can't do is to run Windows Terminal Services so that other computers in your network can use your central computer's processing power instead of their own.

Network

  • Microsoft Windows Network (Win-95b or later) Setting up your network
  • or Novell Network
  • or TCP/IP Network
  • or other Netbios Compatible network

Internet

  • Internet Connection for automatic emailing functions
  • Microsoft Outlook Express V5 or better (with html email support)
  • Program updates can be downloaded from our Website as required

Laser Printer Notes

Make sure that your laser printer is not a GDI printer. This means that it's a "brain damaged" printer where your PC and Windows do all the work. Make sure that the printer is a HP Laserjet compatible printer and can support PCL4, PCL5 and/or PCL6 page control language. The Canon laser printers that I've seen are not Laserjet compatible.

No printer that I've seen so far can print on the entire page. Laser printers generally have only about 2.5mm around the edge of the page that they can't print on and so if you need to print a pre-printed form (eg Lands Titles Office Transfer Form) then a laser printer is better than an inkjet printer.

If you need to print in colour then an inkjet printer is generally much cheaper and faster than a colour laser printer.

Inkjet Printer Notes

The cheaper a printer is to purchase, the more expensive it is to run. The cheaper printers use one cartridge for black ink and all of the colours - so when you run out of black ink you have to throw away any unused colour ink (which might be ALL of it if you've not used any colour ink). These printers may be ok for home use where you aren't printing much but are generally too expensive for office use. Some printers have a separate black cartridge but a single three colour cartridge so, if blue is your favourite colour and you've used all the blue ink then you are going to throw away the other colours if you replace the blue ink. You should get an inkjet printer with separate ink tanks for each colour (eg Epson C70).

Some inkjet printers (like HP Deskjet) have the print head integrated into the ink cartridge. When you replace the ink cartridge you get a new print head so any problems with the old print head are automatically fixed. These cartridges are normally more expensive than an ink only cartridge though so it's a double edged sword.

No printer that I've seen so far can print on the entire page. Laser printers generally have about 2.5mm around the edge of the page that they can't print on. The InkJet printers that I've seen either can't print on Approximately the top 2cm or bottom 2cm of the page. The actual amount of unprintable area and whether it's at the top or the bottom of the page depends on the printer. This means that an inkjet printer may not be able to properly print a pre-printed form (eg Lands Titles Office Transfer Form) if it's required to print in the area of the page where it simply can't print. For this type of application a laser printer is better while if you need to print colour then an inkjet printer is probably better.

Receipt/Cheque Printers

For those of you that want to be able to print receipts and/or cheques from your software - you will require a dot matrix printer. We would suggest that an Epson LX-300+ printer would be suitable for either purpose. This is a basic 9-pin, 80 column dot matrix printer which takes continuous tractor feed paper. Receipts and cheques are generally printed with three to a normal 9" wide x 11" high page. An alternative for receipts would be to use a POS (Point of Sale) printer (like a credit card receipt or cash register docket printer). We can also support these printers. Our suggestion would be an Epson TM-U200. If you choose to make use of a printer other than an EPSON printer then please make sure that it is EPSON ESC/P or ESC/P2 compatible.

If you wish to use a cheque/receipt printer and you have a networked computer system the printer(s) can be plugged into computers on the network which haven't already got another printer installed. This is the cheapest and easiest option but it requires these computers to be turned on in order to print. A better alternative is to install a second/third printer port card into the main computer (or only computer) so that all printers are connected to this main computer and as the database is also on this computer the printers will be available any time the database is available.