sage line50 (and all sage products) suck c8ck!

problem: performance problems with sage line50 v11.01.035 (last version before the 2007 release, which we are NOT upgrading to until there is no other choice).

what i am not doing: calling sage, i have tried this before and THEY DONT KNOW... ANYTHING... EVER!


after a recent hardware and network upgrade (all machines hp p4 3ghz, half gb ram, 1gb managed switch) i was hoping the occasional data transfer pauses and slow reporting would dissipate. not so! even scrolling through the admittedly large product db causes stuttering. the helpdesks last offering was that we had an 'unusually large dataset', but im not buying this! so, i will start with two machines (test and server) and see what i can do. im not going into the specifics of this network (no of hosts, whatnot) as generally the network is fairly quiet. ok, ok, i know that the server shouldnt really be used as a desktop, but it is, and does the bulk of the sage work, the other machines occasionally searching products or invoices. so, some figures (just using taskmanager monitors):

steps i have taken to no avail: ensured that the server shared folder is mapped on the test client (to eliminate any unc queries or hostname resolution) and that the mapped address is entered in the 'company' file in the sage program folder, disabled firewalls between test client and server, and sage.ini tweak (enter or change 'Files=100' in the [SG50] section).

general use

server
ram: 240mb available (os and sage running, occasional pop checks)
cpu: 1-15% load, with occasional 25-30% during big saves, but only touching then dropping to zero
network: never over 0.5 %

test
generally the same

test scenario
scroll product list top to bottom, restarting sage each time on test client

server
cpu: 1-5%
network: spikes almost 2.5% coinciding with test client screen stutters

test
cpu: 1-10%
network: spikes 1-2% coinciding with screen stutters

WHY THE STUTTER?

test scenario
scroll product list bottom to top, restarting sage each time on test client

server
cpu: 4-10% (never dropping back to zero during scroll)
network: steady 1%

test
cpu: 15-30% (one 33% spike and slight stutter)
network: steady 2%

WHY NO STUTTER?

can only assume that it is something to do with file caching or something (the fastest cache of info ever, <.5 sec to cache whole db).

im not satisfied with this and will continue to try to improve user experience, but in the meantime will scroll bottom to top and curse sage daily.