TECHNICAL SUPPORT

Issues concerning the playing of the game and submission of the feature are dealt with on this website.

Required PC specification
Pentium 200MHz processor or greater, 256Mb of RAM or higher, Shockwave supported browser Netscape 4.0 or Internet Explorer 4.0 or greater, VGA display with 256 colours, DirectX Sound Card, 4 x CD-ROM, Windows 9x or higher or NT.

For best results
This game will run directly from the CD, but the quality of the integral video will be affected by the speed of the CD drive. Therefore, for best results install the game to your hard drive.

Using this game over a network
Because the game uses so much video we strongly recommend that you don’t run it over a network, but rather, install it onto each computer on which it will be played.

Special Site Licence for Schools
The licence that comes with this product allows individual use only.  However, we are hereby delighted to give to all schools, free of charge, and without requirement of any documentation a special site licence which gives you the right to use this product concurrently on any number of computers throughout the school.

Known Issues
On some lower specification computers, other programs running in the background can interfere with the performance - it may cause the video playback to slow right down and may even lead to an error message which closes the program. (This does not occur on higher specification computers). If this occurs we recommend that you close down other programs, and even restart the computer before playing Newsdesk (to ensure that the computer's memory is as clear as possible.)

Some configurations of graphics cards interfere with the video playback in the game. This can be resolved by changing the settings on Multimedia Properties (accessed by clicking on your "start" button, followed by "settings" and "control panel") - change "Audio Playback" to "Use any available device".

On some computers the screen save function interferes with the game - such that it slows right down or crashes after the computer has been left and the screen save has operated. This can be resolved by disabling the computer screen saver.

If Newsdesk is run on a computer with a minimum specification the sound may not always synchronise with the picture. This does not occur on higher specification computers.

The green "progress line" on the off-line edit screen only gives a good indication of position along the time-line on high specification computers. On lower specification computers this green line may "lag behind".

On a very few computers the game will hang when the user tries to access one of the websites (eg in the research library). This is due to that computer's configuration of web-browser/dial-up. If this occurs we recommend that the user does not click on the link, but copies the web address into their browser and accesses the website directly rather than through the game.

That's all we know about. If you know of any others please tell us: newsdesk@africapractice.com