5 min photo

[Robert_Smith]

No Gene its no better now and it wont be untill 5 minute Photo own up to their blunder. I am still using Paul Smith's solution i.e ver 4 Viewer with ver5 loader. How have you found the problems

Rob

[Robert_Smith]

Robert,

I am sorry that you feel our service is sub-par. We have many customers around the world who send us accolades on our superior service. We have a responsibility to our customers to provide a reliable, quality product that benefits its core audience. While your frustration with speed issues in Version 5 is understandable, haste in judgment is not. Version 5 cannot and never will be as fast as version 4 on the same hardware. The previous version is like comparing Windows Vista to XP, or Mac OS 8 or 9 to OSX on the same machine. I would put money on the fact that installing Vista on a machine that ran XP great would yield unsatisfactory results. This is true with every single software upgrade in the history of computing. If hardware had nothing to do with what software was being used, we would be able to install XP Pro on an old computer from the 80’s that had a 256MB hard drive.

Feel free to join any group which you think can make this faster. I can tell you their conclusions. The only way to make Version 5 faster would be to take away features, therefore resulting in Version 4. The “slowness” experienced by a few is caused by the fact that Version 5 does not require all of the viewing stations to be shut down in the event that you need to delete, rename, or move an image, file, event, or game/competition. While removing this feature would make systems a little faster, it creates a hassle that the majority of our clientele does not want, which is why the feature was added. This single request by our customers was by far the number one request by a large margin. This process creates more overhead, therefore requiring more hardware/horsepower. The way to combat this speed is to get better equipment and have good folder management. As referenced in the manual, we recommend no more than 150-200 medium-resolution images per folder. We test our systems with 300 images per folder and they load in about 7-9 seconds depending on network traffic. We have never experienced “customers waiting an unacceptable long time” as we ensure that we have the right hardware and procedures in place. Getting results in under 10 seconds or so with hundreds of images can only be solved with more expensive and better hardware. Thus our recommendations to you are true.

If there are enough complaints about this speed loss, we would consider adding a on/off feature to this function. So that if speed was more important than ease of use and simplicity and getting better hardware was out of the question, they may do so. Currently, we have only had you and a few others complain about speed and many have upgraded hardware to become totally satisfied. If you would like to continue using the hardware you currently have, we have charged extra from some customers who wanted specific changes to their copy of the software and we could make this change for you in exchange for a fee.

I will be frank with you. I do not like the fact that you think Paul is doing more for our customers than we ourselves do. That is erroneous and completely untrue. While it is okay if you have legitimate complaints about our software, we will not tolerate your “blaming” of your speed issues on our service. I implore you to use software from another developer. I hope that their software’s slowness and difficulties along with the bashing of their trade and terrible customer service will suit your needs. We will continue to “blame” hardware as long as the attempt is made to run software on substandard equipment. Feel free to call Adobe and complain that Photoshop CS4 is too slow on your computer from 2000. You should get a similar email. Robert, after us doing this for 5 years, do you really think that we would go do events and spend day in and day out developing/selling/supporting software that creates “customers waiting an unacceptable long time”? I don’t think so and neither should you.

Good day

Chris Whitson

[ChrisPurves]

WOW! on Chris Whitson's comments. I have not upgraded to V5 yet.
How is the shopping cart working for those that have it installed? I beta tested V5 and could not get the cart or album working. Is it working now?

I understand that we might need to upgrade equipment but it is not on my list right now. Would I have to upgrade just the server or all the viewing stations as well?

Cheers
Chris

[Paul_Smith]

I should chip in here

I had v4 running on p4 machines with 256mb ram - no performance issues, 10/100 lan cat 5 cables, I did however have frequent failures of the v4 loader. i won't dwell on those issues, suffice to say i was left with the impression that I was the only person to experience issues and failures.

I then went v5 loader and viewer and the v5 viewer on the old hardware was simply unusable, and I wasn't using the cart as that has no appeal within my business model.
On speaking with david he advised a min spec for the viewer. I tried the minimum spec and saw some improvement, but not to a usable level.
I then tried a viewing station in a stand alone test environment - no other stations or network traffic with the following spec
2.1ghtz core 2 duo processor running XP
2gb ram
gb network card
gb switch
cat 6 cables

the server was the same as before -
winserver 2003 pro
4gb ram
2.8ghtz dual core
dual HDD's with the 5 min setup on the second drive
gb network

With more than 100 images in a folder the wait time at the station became an issue, with 500images it failed to load

I accept that 500 images in a folder is high, but that is often the case, and not an issue on v4 even on a VS with just 800htz p4 processor and 128mb ram.

i can if you want get the person who assisted me to post all the timings of the tests.

I informed david of the tests and times and have never had a response

I use v4 VS with V5 loader successfully, but it does need a bit of manual setting up due the change of share names from v4 - v5 and I have lost the ability to delete and or rename images / folders on the fly, but V5 loader has in the most part been stable - not something that was true of v4

[GeneCarl]

Paul,
how did you set up the v4 viewing stations to work with the V5 Loader. i like the speed at which the v5 loads now (images in background) Haven't really tested yet with a high volume of pictures to the view station. i have a big cheer event coming up with over 500 squads (routines) each folder will have about 300 - 400 photos in them. i was going to do some lab testing using the files from last years event. any thoughts would be appreciated.
thanks,
Gene

[Robert_Smith]

Gene , did Paul reply to your question

Rob

[Paul_Smith]

Just an update on my usage of v5 loader with v4 as the viewer

all i do is create the event as normal in the loader then manually set the share name to photoview on the viewing thumbnails folder level. I normally take a couple of frames to ensure all is generate before setting the share, - Hint - make these frames saleable - candid shots work well - as i have on more than one occasion sold this shot

After that I just use V5 loader as normal, it's as good as gold, esp the ability to process one card after another. the biggest event recently involved 3 photographers spread over 24 pitches and 8 age groups, each download was 200 - 300 images and v5 loader just ate them up and spate them out without any hassles or worries. i think at one point the loader was working on 4 downloads in the background and all 15 stations were in use viewing the thumbs
running win server 4gb mem (the most it can handle as it's 32bit) 10/100/1000 network all stations running v4 and on 10/100 cards
final product PC connected via gigabit