We've finally got something pretty close to a finished set of audio data files for 2.0, so for the benefit of those of you shopping for SD cards I thought I'd post the space requirements here.
The audio files will be available with 2 different speakers (male and female), 3 sets of files each:
Single Pinyin syllables: 7 MB each
Basic Words (essentially everything in the HSK plus some others): additional 33 MB each
Extended Words (pretty much every word in the Oxford dictionary or the Pocket version of the ABC): additional 130 MB each
Total: 170 MB per speaker, so 340 MB total for both.
As far as other data files, the new E-C dictionary will likely clock in at around 20 MB, the new C-C at around 15, stroke order data and the extra indexes for the old dictionaries will likely add an additional 15, so worst-case scenario you're looking at roughly 85-90 MB for the non-audio portion of PlecoDict, or a total footprint for absolutely everything of around 430 MB. (excluding any flashcards / free add-ons, of course)
So basically, a 512 MB SD card would be enough for everything, and a 256 MB card would be sufficient if you were OK with only the Basic sets of audio files (or with audio only from one speaker and a smaller set of dictionaries). 128 MB would get you single-syllable audio, but not much more. For new SD card purchases, though, given what prices are like now I wouldn't recommend anything below 1 GB, and really the price differences between 512 / 1 GB / 2 GB are so small that it would probably be worthwhile to get a 2 GB one. (4 GB cards won't work on most Palms and can be a little flaky on the ones they do work on, so I'd probably steer clear of those)
As stated in the subject line, these numbers are preliminary and subject to change, but we're feeling pretty confident about them - the space savings of encoding the audio at a lower bitrate don't seem to be sufficient to justify the reduction in quality, and anyway the last thing we need to do is add yet another Confusing Installation Option by offering people two different audio file quality levels. They may add 10-20 MB or so in the final version, but the 512 MB card compatibility should still hold.
One other hardware requirement note. While we are committed to making Pleco 2.0 run in some form in Palm OS 4 devices, the new audio feature definitely won't (since Palm OS 4 didn't support sampled sound), and in fact some existing features probably won't work either; for example, flashcards and custom dictionaries will likely be disabled on Palm OS 4 because our new SQLite database engine really can't run efficiently on a system that old. (nobody wants to wait 20 seconds for their software to start up) So if you're still carrying around an OS4 device it would probably be a good idea to start planning to upgrade once 2.0 comes out, at least if you want to use PlecoDict for anything other than the basic write-or-type-a-word-to-look-up-its-meaning function.
On the other hand, thanks to the reduced feature set on pre-OS5 devices we may actually be able to re-enable compatibility with Palm OS 3.5; this is far from certain yet, but since the new Lite bundle will be the cheapest product we've offered in quite a while, we'd obviously like to maximize the range of devices that it can run on.
The audio files will be available with 2 different speakers (male and female), 3 sets of files each:
Single Pinyin syllables: 7 MB each
Basic Words (essentially everything in the HSK plus some others): additional 33 MB each
Extended Words (pretty much every word in the Oxford dictionary or the Pocket version of the ABC): additional 130 MB each
Total: 170 MB per speaker, so 340 MB total for both.
As far as other data files, the new E-C dictionary will likely clock in at around 20 MB, the new C-C at around 15, stroke order data and the extra indexes for the old dictionaries will likely add an additional 15, so worst-case scenario you're looking at roughly 85-90 MB for the non-audio portion of PlecoDict, or a total footprint for absolutely everything of around 430 MB. (excluding any flashcards / free add-ons, of course)
So basically, a 512 MB SD card would be enough for everything, and a 256 MB card would be sufficient if you were OK with only the Basic sets of audio files (or with audio only from one speaker and a smaller set of dictionaries). 128 MB would get you single-syllable audio, but not much more. For new SD card purchases, though, given what prices are like now I wouldn't recommend anything below 1 GB, and really the price differences between 512 / 1 GB / 2 GB are so small that it would probably be worthwhile to get a 2 GB one. (4 GB cards won't work on most Palms and can be a little flaky on the ones they do work on, so I'd probably steer clear of those)
As stated in the subject line, these numbers are preliminary and subject to change, but we're feeling pretty confident about them - the space savings of encoding the audio at a lower bitrate don't seem to be sufficient to justify the reduction in quality, and anyway the last thing we need to do is add yet another Confusing Installation Option by offering people two different audio file quality levels. They may add 10-20 MB or so in the final version, but the 512 MB card compatibility should still hold.
One other hardware requirement note. While we are committed to making Pleco 2.0 run in some form in Palm OS 4 devices, the new audio feature definitely won't (since Palm OS 4 didn't support sampled sound), and in fact some existing features probably won't work either; for example, flashcards and custom dictionaries will likely be disabled on Palm OS 4 because our new SQLite database engine really can't run efficiently on a system that old. (nobody wants to wait 20 seconds for their software to start up) So if you're still carrying around an OS4 device it would probably be a good idea to start planning to upgrade once 2.0 comes out, at least if you want to use PlecoDict for anything other than the basic write-or-type-a-word-to-look-up-its-meaning function.
On the other hand, thanks to the reduced feature set on pre-OS5 devices we may actually be able to re-enable compatibility with Palm OS 3.5; this is far from certain yet, but since the new Lite bundle will be the cheapest product we've offered in quite a while, we'd obviously like to maximize the range of devices that it can run on.
so - should I get 8 or 16GB 