Windows		Macintosh
	Minimum	Recommended	Minimum	Recommended
Processor	Pentium Class 133 MHz	Pentium 166 or faster	PowerPC 75 MHz	PowerPC 180 MHz or faster
RAM	32 MB (64 MB for Windows 2000)	64 MB or more	32 MB physical RAM	64 MB or more
Hard Disk Space	110 MB available	150 MB available	30 MB available	50 MB available
Operating System	Windows 98, Win 98SE, Win NT 4.0 w/SP31 Win ME, Win 2000, Win XP. Windows 952		MacOS 8.61 and higher. OSX.2	MacOS 8.6
Expansion	Ethernet card with RJ45 connector, or open (ISA or PCI or PCMCIA) slot with free compatible IRQ, or open USB port.		Ethernet card with RJ45 connector3
Other	CD-ROM drive required. Sound card and speakers recommended. SVGA or XGA graphics card recommended.		CD-ROM drive required, sound card and speakers recommended, 16-bit color required 32-bit recommended
Footnotes	1NT service pack 5 or higher recommended. 2Microsoft no longer offers phone support for Windows 95. Road Runner supports Windows 95 on a best effort basis, but cannot guarantee optimal performance. Please note that your computer system, as well as certain broadband Internet services, may require resources beyond Road Runner's minimum standards.		1Road Runner supports earlier releases on a best-effort basis, but cannot guarantee optimal performance. 2Road Runner supports OSX on a best-effort basis, but cannot guarantee optimal performance. 3Ethernet card must be installed and available for Road Runneruse. Please note that your computer system, as well as certain broadband services, may require resources beyond Road Runneržs minimum standards.

In theory, any computer can use Road Runner. In practice, more than any other factor, your computer will affect the speed with which web pages appear, video streams, and files download. In other words, if your computer is slow by today's standards, you probably won't be happy with the way Road Runner performs on your system.

To understand why your computer plays such an important role in determining your speed, consider that every web page you view is composed of dozens of text and graphics files. Each of these files has to be downloaded in chunks no bigger than 1.5K, stitched back together, and stored on your hard disk. Then the HTML describing the web page has to be parsed, the graphics decompressed and formatted for display, and scripts--if any are included--have to be run.

More than any other activity, web browsing puts your computer through its paces, placing high demands on your processor, RAM, hard disk, graphics accelerator, and networking hardware. If any of those are below par, or if the software controlling these systems is configured improperly or corrupted in some way, your speed will suffer. In many cases, our customers have found that reinstalling their web browser or operating system improved their speed dramatically.