Basic ToolsHardware Requirements


Job one in building your Yahoo! store is having the necessary computer hardware to run the programs to access the Yahoo! store building site. Starting out with the proper type of computer system will make your life much easier when working with the store templates and other store building tools that Yahoo! provides.

Caution: Check It Out Before You Buy

Before you purchase software, make sure you consult with the software provider to verify whether the computer you are using meets the system requirements.


Having a reliable computer is essential to your business. It's even more so when creating an online storefront. With the continuous price cuts in personal computers, you can purchase a system today that will most likely meet your hardware requirements for as little as $299. Though this kind of system is attractive for the price, we would recommend that you spend a little extra for more computing power. With software requiring more and more horsepower these days, a more advanced computer will be more likely to accommodate all your future system requirements.

Although there are no system requirements for using Yahoo! Store Editor, there will be system requirements for some of the other software that you may want to use to help build or market your store. The following is a list of system requirements that will meet the needs of most of the software requirements in this chapter.

  • Operating system: Windows Me/XP/2000

  • Processor: 1.5GHz Pentium III or Athlon Processor

  • Memory: 256MB

  • Disk Space: 40GB

Yahoo Talk: Yahoo! Store Editor

Store Editor is Yahoo!'s online tool for building your store. It's great for those who do not know HTML and want to quickly get their site up and running.


If you're not familiar with computer terminology, an operating system, or OS, is the software program that is used to control all other software programs. It's the software that first comes up when you start your computer and allows your other programs to run. For the PC, an example of an OS is Windows Me, XP, or 2000. The CPU, or central processing unit, is the brain of the computer. That's the computer chip inside your desktop or laptop computer that interprets and computes instructions.

Bill Gates or Microsoft once said that 64K was more than enough RAM you need for a computer. Boy, was he wrong. RAM, or random access memory, is the computer's memory that your software programs use to temporarily store data for rapid access. The more RAM you have, the more software programs you can run simultaneously. Having more memory will also speed up the processing time and your Internet online activity. As the old saying goes, you can never have too much RAM!

Finally, there's disk space. Disk space is the amount of data your computer can store on your hard drive. The greater the disk space, the more software programs you can install and the more data files you can have on your computer. Today's hard drives will provide you with more than enough space to store your programs and data.

Oops! I Lost My Data!

Although Yahoo! backs up all your store data and website files, it's essential to back up your computer files. You may have email, accounting data, customer contact, product images, software programs, and invoices that may be crucial to your business. Having a hard drive crash or a virus may set you back days to recover if it can be recovered. Companies have gone out of business because of computer system crashes. Some companies were not even able to recover invoices to bill customers.

To avoid such disasters and speed up recovery time, it is a great idea to have a backup system and schedule in place. Backup software such as Ghost by Symantec (www.symantic.com) along with an external hard drive can be a great solution. You can even schedule the software to perform automatic routine backups of your computer. Ghost will allow you to quickly restore individual files, folders, or the entire hard drive.

Yahoo Talk: Yahoo! Backup

Does Yahoo! backup my data in case of emergencies?

All website online store data is backed up in realtime in their main data center. The same data is also copied and stored to another data center located in another geographical site for added protection.





Launching Your Yahoo! Business
Launching Your Yahoo! Business
ISBN: 0789735334
EAN: 2147483647
Year: N/A
Pages: 149

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