RowPro Pricing and System Question

[tafkam]

Hello, hopefully I am posting in the correct area as I found some other questions about RowPro 4.0 in the General section as well.

The software is on sale this weekend ( as I have seen it on other weekends as well) for $69.30 and I am planning on getting it before the end of the day, OR does anyone know if it ever goes on sale for less than that?

I did try the free eval and liked it, although I tested it on my laptop and per some other threads I see, I do have a couple of older machines that I could dedicate to RowPro, and that is what I am planning on doing.

Here are my choices, I have a Dell Inspiron 531S that is stock except that I put extra RAM in it. It is AMD Athlon 62x2 Duel Core 3800+ 2.01 GHZ with 4 MB of RAM. It just has the standard built in video on it, and VGA output only. I could put either XP 32 bit or Win 7 64 bit on it if that matters.


I also have a generic built AMD Athalon XP 2700+ 2.16 GHz with 2 GB of ram, but it does have a separate graphics card, an Nvidia GeForce 6200 AGP 8x with 512 MB DDR2 ram. It has Win XP pro 32 bit.

The video card on that one also has outputs for S-VHS, regular VGA and DVI. It does not say anywhere that I can find what the frames per second are, but from what limited understanding I have of the RowPro software, it would be better to run it on this slower, older machine as it has a separate video card?

The monitor I want to use has HDMI input and VGA input only, so I am not sure if there is any advantage in trying to use a DVI to VGA adapter or even a DVI to HDMI adapter for the connection from the computer to the monitor.

Not really concerned about sound but I can can always hook up some cheap computer speakers to it.


I don't want to use the laptop I was using (even though it DOES have HDMI output) but I can always do that as well, but does not have a separate graphics card and overall is not that high end anyway.

Any info on the pricing or which of these older systems I should use would be greatly appreciated!

Mike

[Slothful1]

Hi Mike

I first bought RowPro in 2004, and can't remember seeing special sale prices along the way, so I would grab the deal while you can. Can't imagine it going down further from that. Even at $99 it's worth every cent, especially for the online rowing.

As for PC/laptop specs, I've always used RowPro on a laptop despite the recommendations that this doesn't lead to optimal results. Until it got stolen last week I was getting 60 frames per second with RP4 on a Dell Vostro 3560 with whatever onboard graphics it has. Previously ran version 3 with no problems on an older Dell Latitude including some online races with all 16 lanes full (framerate did suffer at the start I seem to remember, but not too bad).

I preferred a laptop for giving me the flexibility to move the rowing machine around if I felt like going outside, etc.

I can't decide what to recommend from your wide choice below, but I would suggest deciding on whether you want portability or not (and also the decision of whether you want a larger screen or not). Once you've banked that, I would test RP on each of options to see what you get. It isn't too much hassle to shift licences between PCs if you're out of the trial period. There is a tool on their website that will help test graphics options, but it won't give a measure of frames per second to help decide between different options that are meeting the minimum standards for Live Water.

Shout if you have more questions.

Cheers
Dave

[Carl Watts]

From memory its usually USD$100 or more so that sounds cheap. I paid $100 for V3

All those machines will eat RP, however like I said in my posts its the graphics that are the problem. Really not familiar with AGP but its pretty old and superceeded by PCI-E. Still using an old 3.2GHz Pentium 4 with 2G of memory and Windows 8 and speed is not a problem.

The most common problems are maintaining a reliable internet connecttion for the whole duration of a row if your rowing online and fitting a decent graphics card that displays 50+ fps as shown on the bottom right corner of the screen as your rowing. Pretty lucky over here with our internet quality and stability and have not had a single crash with V4.0 since I started using it last November as part of the test group.

Typically the onboard graphics will not cut it and you need a good graphics card. There is very little audio except the "Prepare to start" and the "Row" voice for online. HDMI just makes it easy these days with video and audio all in one and will give you a much better picture over VGA on a older Plasma that I use as a monitor. Modern graphics cards now come with HDMI outputs as standard and laptops are now doing the same.

RP4 is rock solid so unfortunatly if anyone experiences problems its a user or hardware problem. It is a bit involved getting the right set-up if you want to get it going well on the cheap but if you know what your doing with PC hardware your sweet.

[tafkam]

Thanks Carl I appreciate the info. I did go ahead and get the software yesterday since it was $30.00 less than usual, and upon doing some more research I found that for RP4 I need to use either Win 7 or Win 8 so I think I will go ahead and put Win 7 on my old machine with the half-way decent graphics card and see what happens.

Thanks again
Mike

[Carl Watts]

Yes Windows 7 or Windows 8, however a dedicated PC on Windows 8 boots so much faster than Windows 7, which can be an advantage if your running late to enter a scheduled online row.