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Project Lead The Way, working with its vendors, will specify computers each year that we estimate will run our course software for the next three years. Many schools have developed policies under which new, more powerful computers are placed in PLTW© labs, and the existing computers are moved to areas with less demanding applications. In doing this, they insure the longest useful performance of their computers.
Each teacher participating in training and teaching Project Lead The Way© courses is required to have a laptop computer for his/her use. Teachers should have Administrator rights on their computer. The teacher's laptop must have wireless Internet in order to participate in the Core Training.
Below are the minimum computer requirements for running PLTW software (specifically for Inventor, Revit or EdgeCAM Software):
- Intel Pentium©. Xeon©, or AMD Athlon™ 2.0 Ghz
- 2 GB RAM
- 128 MB RAM Video Card (must be compatible with Autodesk Inventor software)
- 30 GB free space on Hard Drive
- DVD-ROM drive (for loading)
- Adobe Flash Player 10
- Microsoft Excel 2003 through 2007 for iComponents, thread customization, and spreadsheet-driven designs
- Windows XP Pro with service pack 2 or better
- IE6 or later
Below are listed the specifications that PLTW recommends that schools use to purchase new equipment with an expected 4 year life span. Schools that have a technology plan that rotates computers out of the design lab to other areas of the school might not need to incur the expense of planning that far out.
- Intel© Core 2 Duo or equivalent i5 or i7 processor
- 4 Gig DDR3 RAM with the ability to upgrade
- 150 GIG 7200 RPM Hard Drive minimum
- PCI-eXpress 256 MB or greater DirectX or OpenGL Capable, Workstation Class graphics card (No integrated video with shared RAM. Intel Graphics chipsets are not recommended). For further details about graphics cards, see the Autodesk website.
- DVD-ROM Drive
- Windows XP Pro SP2 or Vista or Windows 7, 32 or 64 bit operating system. (XP 64 is not recommended) or Apple MacBook Pro with Bootcamp and one of the above systems.
- IE6 or later
- Adobe Flash Player 10
- Microsoft Excel 2003 through 2007 for iComponents, thread customization, and spreadsheet-driven designs
PLEASE NOTE: Basic Intel graphic chipset or other chipsets with shared memory are not recommended for video display. All graphic chipsets must be 3D capable and support OpenGL and DirectX. A third party Graphic card is usually necessary.
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