Manifold System Release 5.00 Hardware and Software Requirements

Hardware and software requirements vary considerably depending on the tasks undertaken.

Minimum Configuration

The minimum configuration allows installation of Release 5.00 and work with small components.  It is a limited configuration that is not recommended for anything other than small drawings.

• 200Mhz Pentium (500Mhz PIII or greater recommended)
• 64MB RAM (256MB or greater recommended)
• 800 x 600 SVGA Display (1280 x 1024 or greater recommended)
• CD ROM
• 100 MB hard disk free space (gigabytes of free space recommended)
• Windows '95, '98, Me, NT 4.0, 2000 or XP
• Internet Explorer 6 or most recent IE version plus most recent service pack.
• IIS 5.0 or greater to operate Manifold IMS.

Note: Use with Windows '95 is currently supported but not recommended due to numerous bugs in Windows '95.  At some future time manifold.net will terminate support for Windows '95.  At that time Windows '95 users will have to upgrade to a newer version of Windows or be willing to continue using Manifold 5.00 at whatever service pack level was last published for Windows '95.

Manifold IMS (Internet Map Server)  - Manifold IMS is published for use in Windows 2000 (Server or Professional running IIS), XP and NT 4.0. The map server has been observed to work using the personal Internet server in Windows 98, Me and 95; however, these operating systems are not supported for use with the Manifold map server. Performance with 98, Me and 95 (if it works at all) will be greatly reduced as compared to 2000 or XP.

Recommended Hardware Configurations

Some suggestions when assembling a system:

• Just about any modern AMD Athlon or Intel Pentium III system with 128 MB of RAM and Windows 2000 will be fine for working with small to mid-sized drawings in an ordinary vector GIS way. Faster Duron or Celeron class machines will be fine as well. 
• When working with images, we suggest at least a 500 MHz Pentium III class machine with 256 megabytes of RAM running Windows 2000. This is excessive for small images but necessary for mid-sized images. Images are computationally intensive.
• A fast graphics card must be installed when performing 3D rendering in terrain windows. NVIDIA-based cards currently selling for under $80 will provide smooth motion even with large terrains. We like cards using NVIDIA graphics processors.  Download the latest drivers from the NVIDIA site for maximum performance.  
• When working with larger images or sophisticated maps combining many images and drawings, we recommend a gigahertz class processor with at least 512 megabytes of RAM or even a gigabyte of RAM. At this writing a 1.4 Gigahertz AMD Athlon machine with 1.5 gigabytes of RAM, 80 gigabyte hard disk and a very fast NVIDIA graphics  card can be assembled for well under $800. This is thousands of dollars less than the cost of proprietary workstations that are currently used for such work. Very soon, prices will plummet so such machines will be considered entry-level devices that may be assembled for less than $500.  
• For very large tasks or large images, consider investing in a dual or quad processor machine. 
• We suggest Windows XP, 2000 or NT or above when working with more than 64MB of RAM. XP, 2000 and NT are much more reliable with modern amounts of RAM than 16-bit Windows systems.
• Manifold System Release 5.00 was developed on PIII and Athlon machines running at 500Mhz or less in order to avoid impractical expectations about machine performance.  Gigahertz machines are now cheap and highly recommended.
• Large disk drives are now cheap.  Get lots of space to hold the maps and images you will download for free via Internet (get DSL or a cable modem too so you can download lots of free data).  Release 5.00 reads over 60 formats so you will find a wealth of free GIS data on the web you can use.  

Windows Configuration Requirements

Getting ready for installation consists mostly of making sure your Windows system has been updated to the latest spec.

1. Review the hardware requirements above to make sure you have adequate room on your hard disk, etc. 

2. Installation of Manifold System Release 5.00 Professional edition requires that your Windows system be updated to the latest Microsoft spec using the latest Microsoft Service Packs or other updates.  For some older Windows 95 systems it is not easy to find and install the latest updates. 

3. You must install Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or more recent to use all Manifold features.  Manifold depends upon the IE installation to install necessary .dlls and other upgrades to your Windows system. In addition, the XML parser bundled with IE is used to read Manifold's own configuration XML files.  You may use whatever browser you like (AOL Netscape, Opera, whatever) as your default browser; however, an IE installation is required.  IE 5.5 is acceptable for Windows '95.

4. Other required Microsoft updates to your Windows system are provided on the Manifold CD. Windows XP requires no updates since it incorporates the lates

Limitations when using Windows '95, '98 or Me

Although Manifold may be used on Microsoft Windows '95, there are several key limitations in this operating system. Most limitations will also apply in Windows '98 and Windows Millennium.  In the following notes, "Windows '95" should be taken to mean "Windows '95, '98 or Me".   

To avoid limitations, use Windows 2000, NT, or XP.  Windows 2000 or more recent is strongly recommended.

Areas not always displayed  - Due to limitations in Windows ’95, areas will not always be displayed properly. Areas defined by polyline boundaries consisting of over 32,000 points will never be displayed; however, it is possible due to errors in Windows ’95 internal software that some other areas consisting of less than 32,000 points will also not properly be displayed. There is no workaround for this problem other than switching to a more modern version of Microsoft Windows.

Areas not resizable - Area styles are not resizable in Windows '95. Area styles are fixed at size 5 in those systems since all they support is an 8 x 8 pixel bitmap matrix. 

Zoom limitations in Windows ’95 - In some circumstances Windows '95 installations will not be able to zoom as far into a drawing, image or map as is possible in Windows 2000 or Windows NT.

Windows '95 Crashes  - Manifold uses standard Windows virtual memory management facilities when working with components too large to fit into available RAM. Windows '95 memory management facilities are unreliable for large projects and will crash when Windows 2000 or Windows NT 4.0 will not. In addition, printing through Windows '95  is less reliable because these systems do such a poor job of memory management that internal bugs in printer drivers are more likely to surface. These are not Manifold crashes but are operating system crashes. When working with large projects, use Windows 2000.

Limited Support- The Manifold team strongly recommends Microsoft Windows 2000 and subsequent Microsoft products such as Windows XP based on Win2K technology. We believe that Windows 95, 98 and Me are outstanding products and in general would like to make sure our product works the same in Win’95/'98/Me as they do with NT or 2000; however, since 2000 provides more capability than ’95/'98/Me, we cannot in our product add capability that ’95/'98/Me do not have. Our support plan for ’95/'98/Me is limited to verifying that our code conforms to the Microsoft standards and that any errata are a result of limitations in Windows 95, Windows 98 or Windows Me.

Limitations when using Windows '95 or NT 4.0

Layer transparency not supported - Windows '95 and NT 4.0 do not support support layer transparency so current builds of 5.00 do not provide this feature.  Future builds of 5.00 will support layer transparency in NT  operating systems but this feature will operate considerably slower than in Windows '98, Me, 2000 or XP since it not provided by the operating system but added by the application.

Printer Limitations - Manifold uses standard Windows facilities to print to printers. Manifold passes the print job to Windows, which then calls the printer driver. There is no contact between Manifold and the printer driver at all, so that any Manifold print job passed by Windows to the printer driver is guaranteed "legal" since it arrives from Windows using internal Windows system routines. Experience with previous editions of Manifold showed that numerous printer drivers do not fully support the requirements of a printer driver documented by Microsoft, so that some "legal" but complex jobs passed by Windows to the printer would crash the driver.

Release 5.00 therefore uses a very simple set of Windows calls in an attempt to avoid triggering bugs in printer drivers provided by the printer manufacturer. Over 95% of reports from PrintTest printer samples show correct printer operation.  If you experience difficulty printing, make sure to check the printer manufacturer's web site to see if there are more recent drivers available for your use, since the difficulty may arise from a bug in the printer driver that has since been fixed. Note that Manifold is sold for use with printers that fully support Windows requirements for printer drivers.

If you have any question about your printer's ability, download the PrintTest program from our web site and verify correct functioning before purchasing Manifold.

Size Limitations - Although there are no practical limits on the numbers of layers in a map or number of components in a project, Manifold projects are limited to a total size of 2 gigabytes. The sum of all components within one project cannot exceed this size.

Memory Requirements for Large Projects - Manifold is designed for an era where RAM memory is cheap and personnel costs are high. Undo and may other user-friendly features require a lot of memory to implement. In order to make it possible to cancel out of certain operations, operating memory requirements may temporarily increase to three or four times the size of the map loaded. Normally, virtual memory will handle such requirements; however, for best performance we recommend installing lots of RAM.