Copy of V8 upgrade for sale

[pharry]

I purchased an upgrade to V8 from V7, and it simply won't work for me. I have fast-moving inventory and update my site every 5 minutes. With V8, the upload time increased form 2 to 5 minutes, up to 30 to 40 minutes. I never would have purchased this upgrade had I known about that dramatic change in performance. (Suggestion to Actinic - this needs to be made clear to buyers who are upgrading. This is not a trivial matter.)

I've been working with Actinic support and Brian (Sure Solutions), but no workable alternative has been offered.

Both Brian and Actinic refuse to give me a refund. So, if you would be interested in purchasing this unopened box, then I would like to sell it.

Pat

[jont]

Pat - if the license has been used to upload to a site (even a test area of a site) I don't think you will be able to sell the copy on.

[pharry]

I'll work something out. An $850 loss is pretty devastating for me. I really wish someone had been upfront about the significant change in processing time.

[jont]

Are you using Best Sellers / New Products in any side bars? There is a workaround in the AUG to remove this from the flow to prevent Actinic publishing every pages upon refresh - this could help speed things (if you are not already doing this)

[pharry]

I've tried everything - working with Actinic in the UK and Sure Solutions in the US. The UK support group was very helpful, but just couldn't get the time down below 30 minutes.

Sure Solutions got the time down to about 10 minutes by removing the new V8 features. But those were the reasons I upgraded, so that option wasn't really a good one for me. I believe they also made some other changes, but I'm not sure what they did, and haven't yet told me. At any rate, 10 minutes is really pushing it. Possibly workable if it were a short term solution, and if I knew what else they did to my database.

Thanks for the suggestions. I really feel that we've exhausted everything at this point. The sad thing is that I guess this means the end of the road with Actinic for me. I can't stay on V7 forever with no new functionality.

[george]

Pat, is the time due to every page being uploaded on every upload, rather than only the pages that have changed due to stock alterations?

[Duncan Rounding]

Are you using Best Sellers / New Products in any side bars? There is a workaround in the AUG to remove this from the flow to prevent Actinic publishing every pages upon refresh - this could help speed things (if you are not already doing this)

This is the most likely culpret. Have you implemented it?

[Andy Porter]

Hi Pat,

I understand your frustration but please do not sell on your V8 upgrade. It is licensed to you and you leave yourself wide open if you sell on or transfer the license in any way,

Regards,

Andy Porter
Actinic UK sales

[pharry]

Pat, is the time due to every page being uploaded on every upload, rather than only the pages that have changed due to stock alterations?

No, I use Mole End and check for new orders every five minutes. If an order is found, then update takes place. A refresh takes over 3 hours for me.

The version of my database that Sure Solutions sent back to me had the Best Sellers, Also Used, and New Products all disabled. The update with that took about 8 minutes, I think. With no orders placed. That's up from 2 minutes in V7. But of course - that's without the features that prompted me to purchase the upload.

[pharry]

Hi Pat,

I understand your frustration but please do not sell on your V8 upgrade. It is licensed to you and you leave yourself wide open if you sell on or transfer the license in any way,

Regards,

Andy Porter
Actinic UK sales

Andy, what do you propose? I just can't afford to throw away $850 ($870 with shipping). I guess I'm really struggling with why I can't get a refund. The software crashes on my New Products list, and the processing time increased 8x. Is this not defective, or at least misleading? All I really want is my money back. Please.

[cbarling]

Hi Pat,

Sorry for all of the hassle that you've been having.

Do you have a ticket number or know the name of the person you spoke to in Actinic support as I don't seem to be able to track it down?

Alternatively, if you email me your phone number and which time zone you're in, we can call you and try and get to the bottom of the problem. My email is my community username @ actinic.co.uk.

Having chatted to development, we do not believe that the performance deterioration between v7 and v8 that you've experienced is typical, so there may be a way of getting around it.

Chris

[cbarling]

Sorry, Pat, I've now found the issue internally, so please ignore my request for more information.

Chris

[pharry]

Do you have any additional information on this status? Progress on my issues or work on the database I sent?

[cbarling]

Hi Pat,

I've just reviewed all of the information and my conclusions are as follows:

- the biggest slow down is from the marketing lists. I undertand that these are the reason that you've bought v8. Becaues of the potential performance overhead, the lists are designed so they can be: run on every upload; only on request; or every n days. I would suggest that you set them to run once a day. That way, your generation time will fall to 8 minutes (except once per day), and you can still benefit from the new features.

- v8 generation is slower than v7. For most sites, this seems to be within acceptable limits, but for some it isn't. We are working on a project internally which will make improvements in this area, and these may be very substantial. It's always difficult to say until you get into the guts of the thing. We have freed some resource for it, but we haven't finished the planning yet.

Regards,
Chris

[pharry]

Chris, would it be possible for me to get a refund on my V8 copy for now? I will reconsider the upgrade later when some of the new development has been done?

Thank you.

Pat