What you need for this course - Power BI Tutorial

- Here's what you'll need to work along with me in this course. First, some hardware recommendations. Available RAM is the amount of memory that you have that you can use that, for example, windows isn't using or other applications that you're running aren't using. And you need at least a gigabyte of available RAM to be able to run Power BI Service. But that's the minimum. One and a half gigabytes is recommended and I would recommend an even higher number if you're going to be running Power BI in an organization for part of your job. If you have a computer that has eight gigabytes of available RAM, then you can use bigger files and you'll be much happier than if you only had one and a half gigabytes or two gigabytes. Your CPU must be one gigahertz or faster, 64 bit processor, but the recommendation is a 3.2 gigahertz processor. Display settings are something that most of us simply set once and then we ignore, but with Power BI, you'll need to be more attentive. Because if you set your display to less than 1440 by 900 or if you're using a 16 by 9 orientation in your display 1600 by 900, Power BI will still display, but some of it will be off the edges of the screen. So, if you want to be able to see the entire Power BI window, then I strongly recommend that your display be set at 1440 by 900 or 1600 by 900. In a similar vein, you'll want to make sure that your text display is set for a hundred percent or a smaller percentage if you prefer. It's fairly common with modern displays that we set our screen resolution really, really high and then set the display setting for text higher. So, we can still read the labels on the screen. With higher text display settings, you will have trouble with Power BI. The bottom line, be attentive to your display when you're first using Power BI, even if you've never had to do that for any other software. Regarding software. Power BI is meant to run on Windows 8.1 or Windows Server 20.12 or later. Most of us will probably be running it on Windows 10 or 11. The news here is that you can no longer use Windows 7 with Power BI. You'll also need .NET 4.6.2 on your computer and you'll need to use the latest browser. A new version of Edge like Edge Chromium or Google Chrome or a similar good browser and the latest version of it. If these hardware and software specifications seem a bit off putting, just take them to your IT folks and ask them, do I have at least the minimum or do I have the recommended? Because these things are all in different places. You'll look for your available memory in one spot. You'll look for your current version of Windows and another .NET and another, and so on. So, if any of this is more than you know feel free to get some help before you start working with Power BI. Or alternatively, start working with Power BI and if you run into some problems, ask your IT people if it could be because you have a machine that doesn't meet the requirements or you need some newer software. Now, let's talk about data skills. Imagine that you're working in Excel. If in Excel, you know how to enter, edit and format numbers and text, take a set of data, a data range and format it as a table. Do find and replace, sort and filter in that data table and perhaps even in certain formatted chart, you're going to be just fine here in Power BI. Because these are the kind of skills that you need to bring to a data visualization course. If you would like a refresher on any of these data skills, then go spend a little time with Ozdu Sole's course Managing and Analyzing Data in Excel, in the LinkedIn Learning Library. And then, come back here and continue with me for Power BI.