Hardware requirements for Technical Writers

[Janet Russeau <janet -dot- russeau -at- LA-Z-BOY -dot- COM>]

Hello everyone,
our Technical Communications department is trying to put together a
business case and requirements proposal for upper management.  In it, we
must show exactly what our PC hardware requirements are.  We are currently
using the following setup:

Pentium 166
64MB RAM
2.5 GB hard drive
17" color monitor
connected to a network printer for all printing needs

We use the following applications for projects:

MS Office 97 for all hard copy
RoboHELP Office 5.5 for electronic/HTML help
FrontPage 98 for web page development
Image Composer 1.5 for some graphics manipulation
Visio Professional 5.0a for flow charts and layout design


We have experienced several problems with PC lockups, corrupted files,
General Protection Faults, and Illegal Operations.  Our research into these
problems has lead us to believe that we can eliminate some of this by
upgrading to faster processors and adding memory.  Unfortunately, we do not
have any conclusive proof or facts to back this up.

If we were able to show them the hardware configurations being used by
Technical Writers in the industry, we may have a better chance at getting
what we need.

Please respond to the following questions directly to me, I will then
summarize for the list.

1)  What size processor does your PC have ?

2)  What size hard drive does your PC have ?

3)  How much RAM do you have loaded ?

4)  What size monitor do you have ?

5)  Do you have a sound card and speakers ?

6)  Do you have any additional devices to enhance your PC
     (example: accelerated graphics/video/audio card or additional video
memory)


Your assistance is greatly appreciated,
Janet Russeau
La-Z-Boy Incorporated
janet -dot- russeau -at- la-z-boy -dot- com