3.5.8.9 Include System Information
This option - which is turned on by default, unless you chose to turn it off when given the opportunity during
install - instructs POV-Ray for Windows to include some information that is valuable to the developers when it sends
the above update request.
Note: we would never send any information that personally identifies you or that
could violate your privacy! All we are interested in is system information that will help us better cater for you, our
users, when we rewrite POV-Ray for version 4.0.
Here is an actual sample of the information that is sent, exactly as it appears on the wire (taken as of v3.5
release candidate 5).
TestVersion=3.5.beta.RC5.msvc.win32
CurrentVersion=3.5.beta.RC5.msvc.win32
CPUArchitecture=0x0000
NumberOfCPUs=0x0001
ProcessorType=0x024a
ProcessorLevel=0x0006
ProcessorRevision=0x0404
OSVersion=5.0
OSBuild=0x00000893
CSDVersion=Service Pack 2
BitsPerPixel=32
HorzRes=1600
VertRes=1200
NumberOfMonitors=1
HasMouseWheel=1
CPUFrequency=1396
FeatureSet=0x00004fff
CPUName=AMD Athlon(tm) Processor
CPUIdentifier=x86 Family 6 Model 4 Stepping 4
VendorIdentifier=AuthenticAMD
PhysicalMemory=1073201152
DefaultLanguage=English (Australia)
This tells us that the machine running POV-Ray was a single-CPU box equipped with an AMD Athlon CPU running at
1396mhz (1.4ghz), and had 1,073,201,152 bytes (1 gigabyte) of RAM. It is running version 3.5.beta.RC5.msvc.win32 of
POV-Ray for Windows on version 5.0 of Microsoft Windows (this is Windows 2000), which had been patched up to service
pack 2. It had a single monitor, set for a resolution of 1600x1200 pixels with 32 bits per pixel. Its mouse had a
mouse wheel. The user's default language selection was English.
Information like this - while seeming rather mundane - is important to us because it tells us the sort of hardware
that people are using POV-Ray on. For example, we today still do not know the most common resolution or color depth
that users have. We don't know how important 256-color or low-resolution support is, since we do not know how many
people are using that configuration.
By leaving this option turned on, you are helping us help all users in the future.
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