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C O M M U N I C A T I O N S A N D S A L E S TOOLS
clicking the Try Picasa now button in the right-hand side of the home page. This will take you to a software download screen where you will download Picasa as an executable file to your hard drive. Note: Picasa requires that your PC have at least a 300MHz Pentium processor and MMX technology, and at least 64MB of RAM, although 128MB is recommended. You must have at least 50MB free on your hard disk, although 100MB is recommended. Picasa is not yet available for Mac OS, although there is a Macintosh uploader that can be used for Picasa Web Albums, and an introductory Linux version of Picasa can be found on Google Labs.
Getting Your Photos in Focus with Picasa Once installed, Picasa will ask you whether you want it to scan your hard disk for photos and organize them. If you choose not to let it do this, you will have the option of importing any photos left out at a later time. Picasa's ability to scan your hard disk for photos and organize them for you is one of its most powerful applications. The process can take a few minutes, depending on how many photos you have stored, but once it has completed its task, you will find yourself staring at an attractive interface with your photos and other digital image files displayed next to a sidebar on the left indicating the location of the photos you are currently viewing (see Figure 19-1). You can even click on the folder name above the photos to open a new window to the actual files on your computer. I should add here that when I downloaded Picasa for the first time, I tried to move some files around in the actual folders where they were located on my hard disk, and it caused Picasa to start freezing up. As with all introductory versions of programs, you may run into a bug or two, but I have yet to find anything catastrophic.
Uploading New Images with Picasa To add new photos to your file system from a digital camera, CD, or other device, you don't need to open a graphics program. First, connect the device to your com-