Computer Minimum Specs

Equipment 

Every effort has been made to make Oakton Online courses as technologically accessible to the widest variety of students as possible. While many classes will require higher levels of hardware and software, the absolute minimum for any configuration is listed below. Very important comments and tips follow.

Before enrolling in an online course please check your equipment against these minimum standards then check the individual minimum specs for your course to see if you meet those additional needs. 

Computer

Windows Operating System

• Windows 98 or later operating system
• Pentium or equivalent processor 
• At least 64 MB RAM

Macintosh Operating System

• 8.6 or later operating system 
• PowerPC Processor 
• At least 16MB RAM

Software 

• Web browser software (see below). The AOL default browser does not work well with our courses. AOL users will have to use Netscape or IE. See the Tips for AOL Users.
• A word-processing program
• An email program (Web-based access to Oakton email is available to students and employees).

Modem or other internet connection device

• Minimum 56.6 kbps

Access to the Internet through an Internet Service Provider. 

• Students must have their own ISP — they cannot dial into Oakton. See the page on ISPs for more information.

Notes on the minimum specs

Meeting the minimum specs above may allow you to connect to your online course but the resulting quality of your connection could be annoying. 

A 14.4 modem, for instance, can seem painfully slow when downloading graphics. The standard phone modem speed currently is 56 kbps. Also bear in mind that phone line quality can adversly impact modem speeds.

Also, it should be noted that the specs themselves may be at odds. You may not be able to upgrade one part of your configuration without upgrading other parts. 32MB of RAM likely will not support the needs of a good, recent vintage browser like Netscape 7.0+. A sophisticated word processing program like MS Word is also going to be a system memory hog. Running it at the same time as your browser likely will require a lot more than the minimum RAM.

Browsers

More recent browsers are going to need to run on more recent operating systems. 

WebCT/Blackboard Campus Edition 4.1, the course management program Oakton uses has these browser requirements: 

1. Browser must handle frames, tables and javascript. (The browsers that support these features are: Netscape 2.0 or greater and Internet Explorer 4.0.) 

(Note: WebCT CE version 4.1 is very specific about the browser it supports. See the WebCT Browser Tuneup page for more details.)

2. Certain tools require Java: the chat facility the whiteboard tool. (This means that you will not be able to use chat or the whiteboard without a java capable browser but the rest of WebCT's features should work if you meet the standards in item 1.

• Certain features on your browser need to be enabled: Java and Javascript. See the Help guide for your browser for 
• Browser Plugins (e.g., Shockwave, Acrobat Reader, etc.) may be required. See the Plugins page for more information
• Do not use the standard AOL browser. See AOL Tips.
• WebTV and similar "Internet Appliance" products are not supported

Check the Sample Pages

If the course you're interested in offers a sample lesson, definitely try it out with the equipment you'll normally be using. This may give you a better idea of compatibility. Be sure to follow any links on those samples since many courses will link you to non-Oakton web sites with system spec demands of their own. These unfortunately are out of our control.

Unsure of what you've got?

You can get a report on your operating system & browser versions (plus what plugins you're running) by going to our Browser/OS Detection Page.

As for checking your hardware minimum specs (RAM & processor type), the simplest way on a PC is to watch your screen for it to be displayed while you're booting up.

After boot up, most Windows 98 PCs and later have some easy way of doing it. Some have a diagnostics feature or "sytem info" icon that you'll find in the Control Panel group. Others have an option under Programs/Accessories/System Tools/System Information. On many computers you can go to Start/Run and type msinfo32 which will open a window showing system specs.

For  Mac users, to verify which system software version that you have installed: 

1. With no applications running on your computer, go to the Apple menu and select "About this Macintosh."

2. In the About window, look for the System version number. It should be something like 7.5.3, 7.6, 8.0," etc.