This section describes the hardware, operating system and network requirements for
our online products.
Online participation requires at least a Pentium III 800MHz PC with 256MB RAM, a
full-duplex audio card, and a microphone (headset with microphone recommended).
However, since the Windows XP Service Pack 2 operating system running an
antivirus and firewall consumes approximately 200 MB of RAM memory, we
recommend at least 1 GHz processor speed and at least 512 MB RAM memory. Depending
on what else is loaded on the PC, some PCs with lower specifications (e.g.,
500MHz and 128MB RAM) may work, but we do not recommend it because performance
will be reduced even in the best case.
Online and Coaching interactive classroom participation and file transfer
requires a reliable Internet connection that consistently delivers at least
30 kbps download and upload.
Internet accelerators do not accelerate your connection. They "cache" web pages
and employ various methods to make web pages available to you more quickly. These
processes interfere with conferencing and must be disabled or even uninstalled on
a computer that will be used for our classes.
We recommend Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Mac OS 10.3 or higher.
The
Write Words: American Writing Services
website is designed to run using Internet Explorer 5 and above. Some aspects of our
products may require newer versions. We recommend using the latest version
of Microsoft Internet Explorer available.
All of the popular software firewalls and parental filters can be configured
for conferencing and file transfer, but because of the variations between
software brands, updates, and home networks, we do not provide any assistance
with this configuration. They all come with adequate documentation to support
configuring them for any application.
We insist that you run antivirus software on your incoming and outgoing email.
To protect the staff and other clients, we may block server access to any
client who does not run antivirus software.
We require all clients to have the free
Adobe Acrobat Reader version 5 or
higher. Many of our documents are in PDF format.
We require that you have an unzipping file decompression utility such as
WinZip. Windows XP comes with this capability built in and requires no
separate utility.
The editing and comment features in Microsoft Word 2000 are the standard we
use to communicate with you. If you do not have the appropriate word
processing software,
contact us for more information.
This following section describes the technical performance you can expect from
our servers and conferencing software, and it discusses technical support
requirements.
Due to the vagaries of PCs, networks and the Internet we expect almost everyone
to experience occasional trouble, and it means we regretfully anticipate that
some (less than 3%) of our clients will experience technological problems
requiring them to make significant changes or repairs to their PC, network or
ISP before everything works. For us to guarantee 100% technological satisfaction
would increase your cost significantly, effectively charging 97% of our clients
for issues unique to the other 3%.
In practical terms, this means that we do not
employ dedicated technical staff and we do not commit to providing dedicated
technical support. All that said, we do provide the most advanced
technological enhancements and highest-quality technical assistance you
will find in similar situation. Further details of what you can expect
from our technology and technical assistance are provided in the
following sections.
We contract with 3rdStudio.com, who provide servers for web hosting, and
email. They maintain their servers secure and our email virus free, providing
us near 100% reliability.
Write Words: American Writing Services
uses Microsoft Word for online class assignments. In order to participate in
assignments for online classes, you will need to have Microsoft Word
2000 or greater.
Adobe Acrobat Reader is also required to view
a selection of documents throughout the website.
If you are unable to use Microsoft Word 2000 or Adobe Acrobat Reader, please
contact us to request the files in an alternate
format.
Write Words: American Writing Services
will do their best to accomodate your request; however, an
alternative document format that is compatible with your request may not be
available.
Like automobiles, PCs are becoming increasingly complex. Broadband is spreading
worldwide, bringing with it the proliferation of home networks. As complex as
PCs are becoming, networks are even more so, and there is no such thing as
a "standard" network at the home or ISP level. By far the most common
problems we see clients experience with our conferencing software are related
to network security--firewall, security software, filtering software, browser
privacy and security, etc.
The second most common problem we see is that
the operating system itself becomes modified or even corrupted over time,
especially on PCs with multiple users of various ages. To prevent these
difficulties we encourage you to have experienced technical help available
to assist with installation and troubleshooting. To keep
the cost of our courses as low as possible we do not have paid technical
support staff, nor do any of our fees provide for technical support. We will
present you with technical instructions when you register for one of our
services. Your assigned instructor, coach, or translator can give you
clarification and limited assistance with those instructions if necessary.
When
a problem manifests itself in a significant number of users we work with
those users and the software vendor to resolve that problem, and we provide
full technical support for problems we consider to be due to the
contracted conferencing software or servers. Otherwise we assume individual
problems to be a function of the client system rather than ours. We make no
commitment to provide technical assistance, and we strongly recommend that you
have local expertise to help you restore your system if you become unable to
access our conferences or web site services.
