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Forum thread: Mac user!
| Matt Mars 15 September 2010 16:50 |
STEARsoft looks an ideal product for our needs however we are mac based! Any plans down that path? Meantime, I read something in a thread about registers being available online once registers were inputted over WiFi onto a computer. So could I use a PC to sync the teachers' iPhones, and then have the data accessible on my mac online? Cheers! |
| Marcus Butler (STEARsoft) 15 September 2010 23:27 |
Dear Matt, You just need one Windows-based PC running on your network to act as a server. You'd install STEARsoft there and then all administration and access by teachers is web-based, so can be done from a Mac, a PC, a Linux machine, an iPad etc. iPhones, iPods and iPads running the STEARsoft App will also sync directly to the one installation over the network, as will Palm-based devices. The free demo license will be enough for you to see that all working. If you're on a large network, the only thing to watch will be setting up firewalls and any router equipment to allow traffic through on port 13031. The largest STEARsoft installation I know of has 80+ users with a mix of PCs, Macs and iPad users, so you should be fine. Yours sincerely, Marcus Butler |
| Matt Mars 16 September 2010 11:07 |
Thanks for your detailed response Marcus. We have a PC laptop from our previous system but I think it is out of date. What is the minimum spec and would we need anything other than STEARsoft and Internet Explorer installed? Many thanks, Matt |
| Marcus Butler (STEARsoft) 16 September 2010 12:57 |
Dear Matt, The minimum spec is very low. As long as the PC can run Windows NT, Windows 2000 or better (so XP, Vista, 7 etc) and has a network connection, that's about it. You don't need any extra software (you could even manage without a web-browser on the PC if you always accessed STEARsoft over the network from another machine), and you don't need any particular service packs installed. Having a working web-browser is useful though as it shows whether you have a working network connection. The amount of memory required is modest and is tens of Megabytes (this depends on how big your school is). A fast PC might become preferable for a large school (50+ teachers) once you have a lot of historical data; but this would just be for quicker responses to some of the detailed report options that analyse and process a lot data over a long period of time. If you have some computer knowledge, it is possible to move from one computer to another by simply copying the contents of the data directory in STEARsoft from one machine to another, so you could start with an older computer (or laptop) that you may already have, and upgrade if you find STEARsoft to be not as responsive as you'd like. I suspect you'll find it is fine though with even a relatively old computer. Yours, Marcus. |
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