Technical Communication Can Require Heavy Duty Hardware

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 | Tech Tips, Technical Communication

When I first started my job, I had a desktop machine that ran a bit slowly for what I was doing—I think it had 512 MB of RAM. I suspect that no one expected a technical writing intern to need to run programs that eat up a lot of memory.

Eventually, once I was switched from intern to employee, I asked for more memory, so I was equipped with a Dell laptop. When I was given a choice of a few models, one of the testers I was working with encouraged me to go with the D820, which is the model the developers were using. I did so, and it has ended up being a good decision.

If you asked someone what software a technical communicator needs for day-to-day work, the answer would probably be “Microsoft Word… and maybe Photoshop.” That may be accurate for some writers, while others’ work requires more tools.

I regularly use RAM-eaters like RoboHelp, Fireworks, Captivate, and InDesign. Sometimes I have multiple simultaneous instances of RoboHelp and Captivate open. As tech comm tools become more powerful, they’re going to eat more and more memory and processing power.

I recommend that if you use RAM-eating programs and you spend a lot of time looking at an hourglass or spinner, ask for a more muscular machine in the name of productivity. With the amount of our work that needs a computer, there are only so many things we can do while waiting for the processor to move things along. Maybe you have some hard copy documents to work on editing or some phone calls to make, but you’d probably run out of those kinds of things quickly. And constantly switching tasks like that isn’t a great way to work.

Think of yourself as a developer. You develop textual and visual content and the means by which to deliver it to users. Development is demanding on your machine. If you can get the muscle, go for it. You deserve it.

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