All you need is a multimedia enabled computer and an Internet connection. Multimedia-rich courses may require a more powerful computer to display movies and run interactive simulations. Furthermore, a broadband connection is recommended, as the multimedia portions of the site may be prohibitively slow over a dial-up connection.

We develop on Windows internally, so both Internet Explorer and Firefox/Mozilla are fully supported. However, Internet Explorer does seem to be prone to viruses, spyware, and interference from 3rd party security applications such as virus scanners, firewalls, and traffic monitors. If Internet Explorer doesn't work, often Firefox does work successfully. Other browsers, including Apple browsers, will work successfully for 99.9% of training, but we do occasionally have compatibility problems in the Microsoft simulations, such as right-clicks that don't register correctly.

This site was designed to run under Internet Explorer 5+ under any version of MS Windows and Firefox/Mozilla on Windows. The site works under other systems as well, but we may not be able to offer phone support for all alternate browsers and operating systems. As of this writing, the site runs well under all Windows, Apple, and Linux browsers, as long as they have a current Adobe Flash plug-in.

We make every attempt to stay up to day with video streaming technology, so you may not have the latest plug-ins for viewing online multimedia. Over the past few years, we have consolidated all of our training to run with nothing more than the Adobe Flash plug-in, which can be downloaded on Adobe's homepage at www.adobe.com (click the "Get Flash Player" icon)

In most programs, there are 2 types of videos. We refer to these as "head shots" and "full screens". A head shot is typically a video of the instructor speaking, and the full screen is a capture of the instructor's screen while he or she demonstrates software. The head shot videos are filmed at 320x240, and the full screens videos are filmed at 800x600 (or 640x480 for older titles). 320x240 and 800x600 are the native resolution for each type of video, and this cannot be changed. You can decrease the resolution of your desktop which will have the effect of making everything look bigger. A screen resolution of 1024x768 is optimal. You can also right-click videos and play them in "full screen" which means literally take up the whole screen. But in both of these cases, you are merely making the dots bigger and may lead you to think the video is more "blurry", but it is not. It is the exact same no matter how big you play it.