Vantage 8 compared to Dynamics NAV

Yahoo Archive
1
Just a heads-up really. I'd been on the V8 SysAdmin course and was confident I'd carried
out all the tweaks mentioned over the couple of days.

Epicor sent out a developer to our site to try and resolve our speed issues as we were
really falling out of love with the software. I admit that I wasn't hopeful that this developer
would be able to sort our problems, but I have to say that what he did was actually pretty
amazing.

He carried out a 'dump and load' on the DB (not mentioned on the sys admin course).
Apparently due to the age of our DB it was very fragmented and needed a bit of
maintenance. After this and a few other tweaks we saw screen loading times on our
'average' PCs go from 15-20 seconds down to 5-10 seconds (even better on the faster
ones). This was all without memory caching and makes a massive difference to the
responsiveness of the software.

But it leads me to ask the question, considering you pay Epicor for the privilege of the DB
conversion process, should they not leave the DB in the best possible state before they
install it on your system?

First impressions are very important and ours of Vantage 8 were that it was a slow,
bloated piece of software. It's not quite lightning quick just yet, but I've now got the task
of convincing our users that they can have a usable system after all.

Jonathan



--- In vantage@yahoogroups.com, "jonnyfatman666" <jonathan.waines@...> wrote:
>
> Paul,
>
> Even though price is a major factor, basic functionality is also important. V8 is too
> sluggish on equipment (approved by Epicor) to be useful.
>
> Our DB is 900MB in size and is running on a Dell poweredge 1850 server with Xeon
> 3.2GHz Processor, 2GB RAM, SCSI raid mirror setup. The DB is fully loaded into RAM on
> the server. 100Mbps LAN (also tried thru 1Gbps connection - no difference).
> Client machine typically 2.8GHz upwards with at least 768MB RAM. We left out our older
> machines for a while and tried it on dual core clients with 2GB RAM which yielded in
> slightly faster screen loadng times.
>
> The main things we can't get over are the extra number of mouse clicks needed for
almost
> every operation. Searching seems cumbersome and some screens take upwards of 20
> seconds to load.
>
> From what I have seen on this list, there appears to be a 'performance shelf' past which
it
> is not possible to improve. Everywhere on our current system (vantage 4 on a PIII
550MHz
> 256MB RAM server ) which is snappy, is replaced by laggy screens on the new version.
>
> Essentially we are finding it difficult to swallow that having invested a lot of time (and
> money) in V8, you need supercomputers to run it at a reasonable speed and even then it
is
> slower than our current version.
>
> This all sounds very negative towards Vantage but if there was still a way out using
> Vantage, that would still remain as the simplest option. I just can't see us getting past
> these hurdles.
>
> We have not discussed Vista but seeing as it is a stripped down version of Vantage,
surely
> performance will be similar?
>
> We've tried all the caching options including autoloading groups which is great for a few
> forms but otherwise can take minutes on initial startup. If we're talking to a customer on
> the phone, we can't expect them to have to wait 20 seconds for their order history to
> appear!
>
> Jonathan
>
>
>
> --- In vantage@yahoogroups.com, "Paul V. Blais" <pblais@> wrote:
> >
> > Why not use Vista...what is the price difference in Dynamics? What kind
> > of hardware do you have to run V8? Did you auto load groups and cache
> > forms?
> >
> >
> >
> > Paul
> >
> >
> >
> > From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
> > Of jonnyfatman666
> > Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2007 12:02 PM
> > To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
> > Subject: [Vantage] Vantage 8 compared to Dynamics NAV
> >
> >
> >
> > Hi there,
> >
> > I work for a small electronics/instrumentation manufacturer of around
> > 35 employees. We manufacture nearly all our products which normally
> > start from a bare PCB.
> >
> > We've had Vantage 8 installed for almost a year now and have done
> > various trials and tweaks on it to try and improve performance.
> > Compared to Vantage 4, screens take far too long to load and due to
> > the size of our company, people like to be able to nip around from
> > screen to screen quickly.
> >
> > Our 11 user license puts us at the lower end of the user base scale
> > and we feel a lot of functionality in V8 is never going to be useful
> > to us.
> >
> > We were shown a demo of Microsoft Dynamics Nav (formerly Navision)
> > and it seemed to suit our needs perfectly. Navigation was quick and
> > straight forward, with a much more intuitive (in my opinion) method
> > of searching for records. Integration with Microsoft Office is also
> > very good for obvious reasons!
> >
> > I know it is probably deemed sacrilegious to mention other software
> > on here but does anyone have any experience with Dynamics NAV?
> > I'd be happy to chat off the list if it would be more appropriate.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Jonathan
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
>
2
Hi there,

I work for a small electronics/instrumentation manufacturer of around
35 employees. We manufacture nearly all our products which normally
start from a bare PCB.

We've had Vantage 8 installed for almost a year now and have done
various trials and tweaks on it to try and improve performance.
Compared to Vantage 4, screens take far too long to load and due to
the size of our company, people like to be able to nip around from
screen to screen quickly.

Our 11 user license puts us at the lower end of the user base scale
and we feel a lot of functionality in V8 is never going to be useful
to us.

We were shown a demo of Microsoft Dynamics Nav (formerly Navision)
and it seemed to suit our needs perfectly. Navigation was quick and
straight forward, with a much more intuitive (in my opinion) method
of searching for records. Integration with Microsoft Office is also
very good for obvious reasons!

I know it is probably deemed sacrilegious to mention other software
on here but does anyone have any experience with Dynamics NAV?
I'd be happy to chat off the list if it would be more appropriate.

Regards,

Jonathan
3
Why not use Vista...what is the price difference in Dynamics? What kind
of hardware do you have to run V8? Did you auto load groups and cache
forms?



Paul



From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of jonnyfatman666
Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2007 12:02 PM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] Vantage 8 compared to Dynamics NAV



Hi there,

I work for a small electronics/instrumentation manufacturer of around
35 employees. We manufacture nearly all our products which normally
start from a bare PCB.

We've had Vantage 8 installed for almost a year now and have done
various trials and tweaks on it to try and improve performance.
Compared to Vantage 4, screens take far too long to load and due to
the size of our company, people like to be able to nip around from
screen to screen quickly.

Our 11 user license puts us at the lower end of the user base scale
and we feel a lot of functionality in V8 is never going to be useful
to us.

We were shown a demo of Microsoft Dynamics Nav (formerly Navision)
and it seemed to suit our needs perfectly. Navigation was quick and
straight forward, with a much more intuitive (in my opinion) method
of searching for records. Integration with Microsoft Office is also
very good for obvious reasons!

I know it is probably deemed sacrilegious to mention other software
on here but does anyone have any experience with Dynamics NAV?
I'd be happy to chat off the list if it would be more appropriate.

Regards,

Jonathan





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
4
Paul,

Even though price is a major factor, basic functionality is also important. V8 is too
sluggish on equipment (approved by Epicor) to be useful.

Our DB is 900MB in size and is running on a Dell poweredge 1850 server with Xeon
3.2GHz Processor, 2GB RAM, SCSI raid mirror setup. The DB is fully loaded into RAM on
the server. 100Mbps LAN (also tried thru 1Gbps connection - no difference).
Client machine typically 2.8GHz upwards with at least 768MB RAM. We left out our older
machines for a while and tried it on dual core clients with 2GB RAM which yielded in
slightly faster screen loadng times.

The main things we can't get over are the extra number of mouse clicks needed for almost
every operation. Searching seems cumbersome and some screens take upwards of 20
seconds to load.

From what I have seen on this list, there appears to be a 'performance shelf' past which it
is not possible to improve. Everywhere on our current system (vantage 4 on a PIII 550MHz
256MB RAM server ) which is snappy, is replaced by laggy screens on the new version.

Essentially we are finding it difficult to swallow that having invested a lot of time (and
money) in V8, you need supercomputers to run it at a reasonable speed and even then it is
slower than our current version.

This all sounds very negative towards Vantage but if there was still a way out using
Vantage, that would still remain as the simplest option. I just can't see us getting past
these hurdles.

We have not discussed Vista but seeing as it is a stripped down version of Vantage, surely
performance will be similar?

We've tried all the caching options including autoloading groups which is great for a few
forms but otherwise can take minutes on initial startup. If we're talking to a customer on
the phone, we can't expect them to have to wait 20 seconds for their order history to
appear!

Jonathan



--- In vantage@yahoogroups.com, "Paul V. Blais" <pblais@...> wrote:
>
> Why not use Vista...what is the price difference in Dynamics? What kind
> of hardware do you have to run V8? Did you auto load groups and cache
> forms?
>
>
>
> Paul
>
>
>
> From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
> Of jonnyfatman666
> Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2007 12:02 PM
> To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [Vantage] Vantage 8 compared to Dynamics NAV
>
>
>
> Hi there,
>
> I work for a small electronics/instrumentation manufacturer of around
> 35 employees. We manufacture nearly all our products which normally
> start from a bare PCB.
>
> We've had Vantage 8 installed for almost a year now and have done
> various trials and tweaks on it to try and improve performance.
> Compared to Vantage 4, screens take far too long to load and due to
> the size of our company, people like to be able to nip around from
> screen to screen quickly.
>
> Our 11 user license puts us at the lower end of the user base scale
> and we feel a lot of functionality in V8 is never going to be useful
> to us.
>
> We were shown a demo of Microsoft Dynamics Nav (formerly Navision)
> and it seemed to suit our needs perfectly. Navigation was quick and
> straight forward, with a much more intuitive (in my opinion) method
> of searching for records. Integration with Microsoft Office is also
> very good for obvious reasons!
>
> I know it is probably deemed sacrilegious to mention other software
> on here but does anyone have any experience with Dynamics NAV?
> I'd be happy to chat off the list if it would be more appropriate.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jonathan
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
5
We are a 130 teammember facility with 21 user licenses utilizing MES.
We are running our 1.5GB Vista database on dual 3.0's with 4 GB of RAM.
Client workstations seemed to perform best at 3.2GHz

and 1.5+GB RAM so we have been upgrading to that spec.



We see extra mouse clicks in two areas mainly. Printing packing slips
is one, because there no longer is the mass print option. The second is
updating revisions or checking parts out in general. The set-up of the
program is cumbersome. Getting the named searches set-up right takes
time, and if columns aren't there, then it takes even more time to
set-up the new quick searches is 8.03. But once they are set-up it
seems to work pretty well, depending on how many records you are
searching on.



In our environment users leave Vista open all day so when they come in
they open Vista and auto load a group or two, which is about 10 forms
total, on average. Once we started to auto-load we found the speed to
be much better and they no longer have to wait that long for forms they
use often. But if in your environment you are unable to leave the
program open it can be very difficult and frustrating to deal with the
slowness. Though it takes 3-5 min. to load, in our environment, it is
worth the wait.



One other thing that we had to adjust to was where to find some
information. Part and Purchase advisor are very powerful tools and they
have replaced many of the ways we use to search for things. I think
your order history issue might fall into this.



Our biggest issues have been the revision process, the fact that the
user must be very computer literate to set-up the program the way it
needs to be to function correctly, the lack of mass printing capability
with packing slips and the speed in which they fix admitted "bugs" in
the program, as well as the communication of those issues.



Yes the performance is very similar on Vista. We also seeked out a new
system as well. Dynamics was an option, but we never saw the product
because of the sticker shock. Overall we still aren't thrilled with
Vista 8 but viable alternatives seem scarce, at best, and there are some
really really nice things the software CAN do. But we do echo one of
the latest posts, it seems that "patch" just breaks more things and that
is brutal. I would really like to know who tests this stuff before it
get released.



Paul





From: vantage@yahoogroups.com [mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of jonnyfatman666
Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2007 6:17 PM
To: vantage@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Vantage] Re: Vantage 8 compared to Dynamics NAV



Paul,

Even though price is a major factor, basic functionality is also
important. V8 is too
sluggish on equipment (approved by Epicor) to be useful.

Our DB is 900MB in size and is running on a Dell poweredge 1850 server
with Xeon
3.2GHz Processor, 2GB RAM, SCSI raid mirror setup. The DB is fully
loaded into RAM on
the server. 100Mbps LAN (also tried thru 1Gbps connection - no
difference).
Client machine typically 2.8GHz upwards with at least 768MB RAM. We left
out our older
machines for a while and tried it on dual core clients with 2GB RAM
which yielded in
slightly faster screen loadng times.

The main things we can't get over are the extra number of mouse clicks
needed for almost
every operation. Searching seems cumbersome and some screens take
upwards of 20
seconds to load.

From what I have seen on this list, there appears to be a 'performance
shelf' past which it
is not possible to improve. Everywhere on our current system (vantage 4
on a PIII 550MHz
256MB RAM server ) which is snappy, is replaced by laggy screens on the
new version.

Essentially we are finding it difficult to swallow that having invested
a lot of time (and
money) in V8, you need supercomputers to run it at a reasonable speed
and even then it is
slower than our current version.

This all sounds very negative towards Vantage but if there was still a
way out using
Vantage, that would still remain as the simplest option. I just can't
see us getting past
these hurdles.

We have not discussed Vista but seeing as it is a stripped down version
of Vantage, surely
performance will be similar?

We've tried all the caching options including autoloading groups which
is great for a few
forms but otherwise can take minutes on initial startup. If we're
talking to a customer on
the phone, we can't expect them to have to wait 20 seconds for their
order history to
appear!

Jonathan

--- In vantage@yahoogroups.com <mailto:vantage%40yahoogroups.com> ,
"Paul V. Blais" <pblais@...> wrote:
>
> Why not use Vista...what is the price difference in Dynamics? What
kind
> of hardware do you have to run V8? Did you auto load groups and cache
> forms?
>
>
>
> Paul
>
>
>
> From: vantage@yahoogroups.com <mailto:vantage%40yahoogroups.com>
[mailto:vantage@yahoogroups.com <mailto:vantage%40yahoogroups.com> ] On
Behalf
> Of jonnyfatman666
> Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2007 12:02 PM
> To: vantage@yahoogroups.com <mailto:vantage%40yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: [Vantage] Vantage 8 compared to Dynamics NAV
>
>
>
> Hi there,
>
> I work for a small electronics/instrumentation manufacturer of around
> 35 employees. We manufacture nearly all our products which normally
> start from a bare PCB.
>
> We've had Vantage 8 installed for almost a year now and have done
> various trials and tweaks on it to try and improve performance.
> Compared to Vantage 4, screens take far too long to load and due to
> the size of our company, people like to be able to nip around from
> screen to screen quickly.
>
> Our 11 user license puts us at the lower end of the user base scale
> and we feel a lot of functionality in V8 is never going to be useful
> to us.
>
> We were shown a demo of Microsoft Dynamics Nav (formerly Navision)
> and it seemed to suit our needs perfectly. Navigation was quick and
> straight forward, with a much more intuitive (in my opinion) method
> of searching for records. Integration with Microsoft Office is also
> very good for obvious reasons!
>
> I know it is probably deemed sacrilegious to mention other software
> on here but does anyone have any experience with Dynamics NAV?
> I'd be happy to chat off the list if it would be more appropriate.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jonathan
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]