Laptops and ExpressCard

[d000hg]

We originally had cross-platform support for Macs but it's not current. Also - in the real world we have to support the PCs they have, not force them to buy new stuff.

[Churchill]

We originally had cross-platform support for Macs but it's not current. Also - in the real world we have to support the PCs they have, not force them to buy new stuff.

There is nothing wrong with having a minimum required specification in which your software will run.

If the customer objects then perhaps you should investigate the possibility of providing a version of your software that doesn't have so many bells and whistles.

Manage their expectations.

[Sysman]

There is nothing wrong with having a minimum required specification in which your software will run.

If the customer objects then perhaps you should investigate the possibility of providing a version of your software that doesn't have so many bells and whistles.

Manage their expectations.

I ran into this one frequently back in the Windows 95 era, When RAM was expensive. Too many software producers claimed their product required x amount of RAM, but to run it properly you needed a decent chunk more. The producers' statements made it very hard to get RAM purchases past bean counters, with the result that otherwise decent software ran like a dog.

[VectraMan]

Also - in the real world we have to support the PCs they have, not force them to buy new stuff.

Sounds like somebody made a fundamental cockup in the design of the software if that was the requirement.

I ran into this one frequently back in the Windows 95 era, When RAM was expensive. Too many software producers claimed their product required x amount of RAM, but to run it properly you needed a decent chunk more.

Those sort of requirements are generally made up anyway. I should know: I was the one that made them up for the software producer I worked for. And of course marketing always wanted the requirement to be as low as possible.

[d000hg]

There is nothing wrong with having a minimum required specification in which your software will run.

If the customer objects then perhaps you should investigate the possibility of providing a version of your software that doesn't have so many bells and whistles.

Manage their expectations.

Sounds like somebody made a fundamental cockup in the design of the software if that was the requirement.

We told them at the very start what our best-guess requirements were... a mid-range CPU and a low-mid range dedicated GPU. However it transpires that internally in the client company, they sold it to management as running on any 2-3 year old machines. Only now have they realised that business-grade laptops don't (or didn't until recently) come with dedicated graphics as standard (although we've told them this from the start so 'realised' is maybe not the best word). So their main person on the project is happily accepting it's a cockup on their part... but demanding we fix it anyway.

We are now forced to try and make a cut-down version, but that's not a simple proposition when we are talking 10-50X performance hit for integrated graphics.

Anyhow, the issue here is the technical side. The business side is a bit messed up but once I've explained the problem to them, if they say "requiring ALL customers to buy a new PC is not an option" my role is to try and make it work. ExpressCard/ViDock was one possible workaround but on closer investigation it appears a bit of a dead duck. So we're back to feature cutting and so on.