First of all, before we start to install any software to a machine, we have to study what the system/software capability of the software is and what the minimum/recommended requirements are. There are lot sources we can find out all these things. The information should be found in the manufacture's manu or in the broaches. Or we should hear the information from friends. However, be careful with this kind of information, most of them are incorrect! We can search books in libraries. But the problem of the way is the information could be out of dates. Time consuming as well. As we are all lucky that we can surf in the Internet. Yes! The Internet! There are huge of information on the net and they are the most up to date. If we know the URL of the manufacture of the software, just go there and have look at their support/information pages to find out what we want to get. Or just use net-search with the key words to find out what we want. In fact, most of the information about the software were gained from the Internet. All of us agree this is the best method for gathering information.

When we are satisfied with the information we have, we need to start an installation plan. Checking out what the configuration of the existing system and determine whether they are available to install the software on the machine, checking virus, backing up the system and data files, getting the menus and drives related to the system, preparing some page for documentation, etc. They should be all included in the installation plan. A good installation plan is very important. It will reduce mistakes in and prevent we from wrong steps taken during the installation.

There is a couple of install option we can choose in the installation. As we are forming a software support person, normally we would use the custom method to install and configure the software. A test is necessarily after an installation. However, we still found some funny things when we performing the tests in our practical class. If you take a look at our reports for the installation of the software packages, you will share our experience. Also we need to document the procedure and the configuration in the installation. We will need the documentation for trouble shooting purpose in furture.

Just like people say: you never go you never know. That why we all think the practice are very helpful to us. Once we've got that experience we should be able to use the knowledge to prevent the problems in real life.

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