If your experiencing any of the above symptoms (especially when using Ultra Hal), the first thing you should try and check is that you have no other programs running that may be depleting memory or using sound or video resources, then try rebooting your system to restore your memory and then try just running and using only the CyberBuddy program and see if the symptom still persists and that the voice sound and lip sync is running smoothly, if it is, then your system might not have adequate enough resources to run this technology, and you may want to consider upgrading your sound and/or video devices or adding more memory, especially if you want to use the Ultra Hal AI program and possibly have a few other programs running at the same time. Keep in mind the Ultra Hal program can be a rather resource hungry program especially when you add in the fact that your also running character animations and voice sound, all at the same time. It can be comparable to running a high end resource demanding game. If your PC uses integrated graphics or sound chips, you need to understand that there is a big difference between using integrated graphics and actual quality video cards, the main difference being integrated graphics borrows from the system's main memory to handle graphics tasks, to the detriment of day-to-day performance, where as a good quality video card is far more self-reliant on using it's own built in resources (memory) thus will vastly speed up rendering of animated graphics. The same can also be true if your using a low end video card, low end video cards are often only partially self-reliant on it's own built in resources. Be sure to read the specs, for example you'll sometimes see the word "effective" on the packaging before the listed 128MB of memory which means that it too will share system memory, although not as much as an onboard graphics chip.

1. Video Cards:

A good quality video card can yield one of the best paybacks of any computer upgrade, yet it's usually one of the least considered upgrades. The main reason being, when you run to the store and buy that new top of the line computer system that appears to have the best and most modern features, you assume it must also include a top of the line, or at least decent video card, unfortunately this is not usually the case. A vast majority of the computers sold in stores come with "onboard" or "integrated" graphics. This means that some graphic processing capabilities are built right into the motherboard. Computer manufacturers build computers this way mainly to keep production costs down and is usually suffice enough for most basic uses and common tasks. The average off the shelf computers are not designed or equipped for playing high end games or running hi-tech software, these are more advanced computer tasks that often require better hardware devices such as video cards.

If you only use your computer for basically surfing the Internet or mainly for business, onboard graphics are probably all you need. However, if you like to play high end games or use graphically intense software or watch movies on your PC, adding a good quality video card can help smooth out graphics, improve the way your animation graphics look and play, and even speed up your system. Of course a lot of different factors (the quality of your monitor, the speed of your processor, etc.) also affect the quality of your graphics, but a mid- to high-end video card will perform much better than onboard or integrated graphics. Upgrading to a video card with a fast graphics processor and more video memory can dramatically improve the performance of your system when running games and graphically intense software.

The video card can have an impact on system performance, for some applications the impact is not that significant; for others, the video card's quality and efficiency can impact on performance more than any other component in the PC. For example, many games that depend on a high frame rate for smooth animation, are impacted far more by the choice of video card than even by the choice of system CPU. Think of each moving image as a frame, like a frame in a film. The number of times per second a graphics card can redraw the entire image displayed on the monitor is called the frame rate. Frame rate is the number used in casual discussions of video card performance.

Other factors that can affect frame rate performance are screen resolution and the size of the graphics. The higher your display resolution settings, the lower your frame rate. For example, set your monitor to 1600x1200, and depending on the quality of your video card and the application your running, you could notice a reduction to as much as half the frame rate that you get at 1024x768. The size of the graphics being rendered also plays a significant role, for example, if you take an image that is 250x250 pixels and one that is 500x500 pixels, the 500x500 image is technically 4 times larger in total overall pixels, therefore it will take 4 times longer to render. Ok there was a reason we chose to use these graphic sizes as an example. DesktopMates characters are actually made up of a square frame with the background being transparent. Our smallest characters such as the ones from our Variety Gallery are made up of 250x250 pixel frames and our larger format characters such as Rici or Sheena for example are close to 500x500 pixels. So I think you get the idea that the larger format characters will be a bit more graphically intense to render. We have had a few users complain they have no problem running smaller Microsoft Agent characters such as the Merlin character but the larger DesktopMates characters don't appear to run as smooth or will sometimes even crash or disappear from their screen during an animation and thus take the assumption there must be something wrong with the DesktopMates character, when in fact the problem is just poor video device performance which will not effectively play the larger characters.

2. Sound Cards:

Sound cards are devices that process audio data and send it to one or more speakers. Most sounds cards are also capable of processing audio input from a microphone for various purposes. Sound cards can be used to listen to music, hear sound effects, and do a number of other audio-related tasks.

Most new computers come equipped with an onboard integrated audio chip, this a chip and NOT an actual sound card and are often of poor or lesser quality than an actual sound card, especially if it's AC 97 codec. Again, just like with video cards, computer manufacturers incorporate low end sound chips into the motherboard to save money on production costs, but some are better than others and depending on your system specs it may work fine with this technology. Integrated audio will usually eat up more CPU cycles than a good sound card which can cause stuttering when a character talks and also be evident when running higher-end games. If you frequently run games or other multimedia applications or even just enjoy listening to music CD's on your computer, it is definitely worthwhile to invest in a good AGP or PCI sound card, Sound Blaster Audiogy is a good choice and can be purchased at a relatively reasonable cost these days.