Your computer must have the following in order to install and use the Thinking Stuff software. The Thinking Stuff Help File (downloadable below separately to the main installation file, so you can read through it without having to install anything) has a lot of detail on how and where to obtain and install the pre-requisites that you might not have already.

1. Microsoft Windows operating system.
   • Windows XP; or
   • Windows Server 2003; or
   • Windows Vista (but only if you turn off the UAC); or
   • Windows 2000 (theoretically, but maybe not. Give it a try anyway. Read more...)
2. The Microsoft .NET Framework v2.0 installed. The specific version of v2.0 is important. This is free.
3. PostgreSQL database system. This is also free, and also around 20Mb. Thinking Stuff was developed using PostgreSQL v8.1.3, and it is not known which PostgreSQL versions before v8.1.3 are compatible (however it probably doesn't work with v8.0). This is free.
4. Microsoft Excel. Well, this isn't actually a requirement. But, the output of backtesting is comma-seperated text files. These are viewable with Notepad or Wordpad. But, they have extra commas inserted so they look pretty when opened with Excel. If you don't have Microsoft Excel, you might like to check out OpenOffice.org, the free, open-source replacement for Microsoft Office.
5. Minimum screen resolution of 1024x768. It will work with smaller resolutions, but may be annoying.

You can see the changes made in this and all previous releases in the Change Log. Plus you can see the known bugs still outstanding.

Some people have experienced problems opening the help file after downloading. The problem comes from a Microsoft "feature" :-)

Hopefully though, the resolution is quite simple. Check the sites below. If the first one doesn't help, there are some more suggestions listed in the comments on that page. If you're still having problems, go to the second link.

http://blog.crowe.co.nz
http://blogs.technet.com

You need to register before you can access the installation file. There's a link to register at the very top of this page. Once you do so, it will appear in the list of downloads above. Gyah! One more username and password to remember. I know, I know, I'm sorry.

We have a strict privacy policy, so don't worry about your email being sold or anything like that. But after registering, we might (or might not) contact you in order to ask for suggestions and ways to improve our software and website. (You can of course provide that information at any time though the Contact page).

That's it. No marketing. No spam. You can just delete that email if you want, but we really would appreciate it if you gave us some feedback.

If you then go on to subscribe to our software, and everybody should :-), registering will also help us to streamline the payments process in the near future.