WINDOWS. I tested it on an old XP SP3 system, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t work on something newer. It will not work on any UNIX variant. The port probably wouldn’t be that difficult, but I have no easy way to test it.

PERL. You have to have a Perl interpreter installed, as what I have are perl scripts. I used ActiveState’s activeperl, the free “community” version. I also used the Win32-serialport extension, which is most easily installed using activeperl’s ppm function. Activeperl requires about 70 MB of disk space.

HARDWARE. I’m testing on an old (honestly, I found it on a sidewalk, luckily before it rained!) Dell 2400 with 512 mb and 80 gig hard drive. I am using the old 9-pin serial port, which is what the Infra20 uses. Newer computers (and laptops) may not have a serial port, so Infiltec will sell you a usb/serial converter and I assume that would work as well, although I haven’t tested it. Any more, it is probably easier and cheaper to get an old machine and dedicate it to this function. E-Bay and Craigslist come to mind.

OPTIONAL STUFF. Each hour’s file is about 175,000 records at 8 bytes each, for a size of 1.5 MB. Below is a screenshot of what my directory partially looks like. That adds up pretty quickly, about 35 MB per day, or 1 gig per month.

Internet access is almost a requirement, unless you want to carry all the software over on a CD or a thumb drive. I don’t run an anti-virus script, as this computer isn’t often used for surfing and never for email. I do have a number of utilities that I always install, like registry cleaners and defragmenters. I do have Office 2003 installed so I can collect the results in a spreadsheet. I’ve run just about everything I have concurrently with the data collection and so far I’ve seen no problems. For unattended access I use Teamviewer. The perl scripts are regular text files, so if you want to change them (i.e. use a different com port) you’ll need a text editor. Windows includes Notepad, but I like Notepad++ far better.