what is the average standard pc these days? and connection speed?

[PaulyP]

Just out of interest - does anybody know what the the average standard of pc is these days (uk statistics would be especially helpfull as my site is primarily directed at uk customers, but US or global stats would also help). In light of that, what is a good frame rate for smooth motion in a flash movie on the majority of users PC's. I don't really like 12 or 15 fps - the motion isn't really smooth enough in some places - what's a safe range??
What about connection speeds now?? What proportion of people are on 28k, 56k and broadband connections (again UK info would help)??

Thanks

Paul.

 

[bubu]

I use a 25 frames/second rate and the things are going really smooth...i only use this frame rate.
I am from Romania and from dial up, flash made websites take about half an hour to load and other our to play...even smaller ones....so i advise you to make a flash enable web site only if your target are broadband users.


Regards,
Dragos.

 

[PaulyP]

Thanks for the reply but is that not a little exageration?

My movie size is only 50K which should download in about 10-12 seconds on a 56k dial up connection. Surely flash site sizes of this size work ok on a dial up - don't they???

Any other options would be helpful.

Thanks

 

[wangbar]

50K filesize is fine - maybe dial up in Romania is very slow ;-)

Usually you can download about 3-4K per second on relatively clean phone lines with a 56K modem. I've found clients/users are happy enough with waiting for sites of around 100K to load-up as long as they're given some indication of how long the process will take.

I design for a 750K PIII PC/equivalent Mac G3 as a target platfrom which seems to keep most people happy. If it works on that speed of computer I reckon that's good enough - that's a two year old spec after all. I test on a PII 300MHz machine too if clients really want backward compatibility...

My framerate on a movie ranges between 25 to 60 (I have 35fps set as the default document setting) - bear in mind that framerates on Macs (pre Flash Player 6) are always slower than PC on any .swf so it's good to ramp things up a bit. Things vary between browsers too so you can never guarantee framerate.

 

[PaulyP]

Thanks wangbar - thats a great help - i think I'll go for 40fps - things seem ok at 30 so i guess 40 should give a bit of leeway for various machines and browsers.

Thanks again
Paul

Have a star!!!

 

[bubu]

These were exactly my words...in Romania dial up is a mess... Regards,
Dragos.

 

[bubu]

Thanks for the eyecatch Wangbar Regards,
Dragos.