Well, who could?
On the off chance, we are now going to be screwed for huge amounts of tax to save the planet.
Even if you believe in global warming, you'd have to be as stupid as, er, the average Guardian reader, to think that handing over countless extra bilions is going to make the slightest bit of difference to the problem, given we apparently only contribute 2% to the greenhouse gases.
So we get to lower our standard of living just to make a point to the rest of the world.
Brilliant idea, why don't do something really clever like invade a foriegn country as well. Oh, we already did.
Of course, the reality is it's just a cool way for the nice Mr. Brown to raise even more money to prop up his ill conceived squandering of billions of pounds to achieve a short term increase in the number of labour voters.
Want to save the planet - stop buying new cars and drive something old and interesting. Yes, it probably pollutes more but nowhere near as much as the environmental cost of building a new one or disposing of all these lead acid batteries in your bloody Prius.
Most of all, please, just start to use your brain to think for yourself instead of just believing everything you are told.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Monday, October 23, 2006
Sage Line 50 2007 - the Quick and the Dead
I'd like to say I'm surprised that version 13 appears to be full of bugs, but I'd be lying.
You can develop software quickly OR you can have something that works ; you can't have both.
Sage have followed the strategy adopted by many other companies in the past of having a release a year in order to drive sales. Witness Windows 98 and Windows 2000 etc. However most of these companies have dropped this concept because it makes a rod for your own back having to come up with new features every year and a constant unrealistic development cycle. It also means having to support an increasingly large number of versions.
Best advice for users is to stick to a version that works until you actually need the features offered in a new version or Sage threaten to remove the upgrade path. Then make sure you wait for the bugs to be found in the new version before you commit to the upgrade.
You can develop software quickly OR you can have something that works ; you can't have both.
Sage have followed the strategy adopted by many other companies in the past of having a release a year in order to drive sales. Witness Windows 98 and Windows 2000 etc. However most of these companies have dropped this concept because it makes a rod for your own back having to come up with new features every year and a constant unrealistic development cycle. It also means having to support an increasingly large number of versions.
Best advice for users is to stick to a version that works until you actually need the features offered in a new version or Sage threaten to remove the upgrade path. Then make sure you wait for the bugs to be found in the new version before you commit to the upgrade.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Sage Line 50 gets go faster stripes
Performance issues with Sage Line 50 may be about to become a thing of the past.
While converting our packages to Sage line 50 2007 it certainly seems that certain aspects are much improved in terms of accessing data across the network.
Initial testing suggests that reading through Sales Accounts across the network is at least 30% faster than version 12. There also seems to be more caching going on as consecutive read tests were again quicker than the same tests in version 12.
Watch this space.
While converting our packages to Sage line 50 2007 it certainly seems that certain aspects are much improved in terms of accessing data across the network.
Initial testing suggests that reading through Sales Accounts across the network is at least 30% faster than version 12. There also seems to be more caching going on as consecutive read tests were again quicker than the same tests in version 12.
Watch this space.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Sage Developers Licence - Is it worth it?
I sometimes wonder how many developers actually make any money out of having a Line 50 Developers licence.
Had another call today from a user who has an SDO v10 application. They've just upgraded to v12 and it has not surprisinly stopped working. The developer flatly refuses to pay for a V12 licence, presumably because they can't make any money out of it and undoubtedly the user doesn't want to pay a realistic amount. Were not about to do the job for 3/6 either. We have had this experience a number of times so it can't be uncommon.
The problem is that Line 50 is relatively cheap so the users perception of everything else is that it should be similarly cheap. Strangely, I don't think the answer is to make the SDO licence cheaper as this would just mean there is absolutely no money in developing for Sage Line 50 at all. Perhaps developers should try charging a sensible rate for their work instead of following the rest of the computer industry down the plughole of ever decreasing prices.
Speaking as someone with other 30 years in the industry and experience of just about every role, development is a lot more time consuming than installing a server and requires a far more expensive set of tools ; Sage Licence, Sage Additions advertising, Programming languag, MSDN subscription etc but I can still make far more money slapping in a server than spending a lot more time developing a robust piece of code.
Had another call today from a user who has an SDO v10 application. They've just upgraded to v12 and it has not surprisinly stopped working. The developer flatly refuses to pay for a V12 licence, presumably because they can't make any money out of it and undoubtedly the user doesn't want to pay a realistic amount. Were not about to do the job for 3/6 either. We have had this experience a number of times so it can't be uncommon.
The problem is that Line 50 is relatively cheap so the users perception of everything else is that it should be similarly cheap. Strangely, I don't think the answer is to make the SDO licence cheaper as this would just mean there is absolutely no money in developing for Sage Line 50 at all. Perhaps developers should try charging a sensible rate for their work instead of following the rest of the computer industry down the plughole of ever decreasing prices.
Speaking as someone with other 30 years in the industry and experience of just about every role, development is a lot more time consuming than installing a server and requires a far more expensive set of tools ; Sage Licence, Sage Additions advertising, Programming languag, MSDN subscription etc but I can still make far more money slapping in a server than spending a lot more time developing a robust piece of code.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Sage Line 50 Version 13 (sorry 2007)
We got our copies of the new Sage Line 50 and the developers toolkit today.
Initial impressions are that Line 50 looks pretty much the same as version 12 in terms of the interface.
We will be starting to test the new sdo with our products in the next few days so watch this space.
Initial impressions are that Line 50 looks pretty much the same as version 12 in terms of the interface.
We will be starting to test the new sdo with our products in the next few days so watch this space.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Sage Line 50 : Quick, Quick, Slow?
Performance seems to be a common problem in Sage Line 50.
I think it's fair to say that some operations are slow, particularly when there are lots of transactions on the system, but equally I'm not convinced, unlike some commentators, that network configuration is not a significant factor. It's also kind of interesting to compare Sage running on an old Win98 box and an all singing and dancing XP box accessing data files on the same server.
It's quite possible that Sage haven't taken the time to test some of the issues in a controlled environment, but we have and significant performance gains are available for relatively little effort.
For example, using a unc path to the Sage data files rather than a mapped drive letter can reduce performance by 50%.
Similiarly Norton AV on the Sage dta files will grind Sage to a halt.
Turn off Opportunistic Locking on the client or server. There are lots of Microsoft Knowledge Base Articles on this subject.
There are another couple of Windows Server Policy settings that have dramatic effects on scrolling through lists of Invoices for example and the speed of reporting but I'm not going to list them here because a) We need to make a living and b) You run the risk of messing up your system if you don't know what you are doing.
You will still need to extract data for some operations because, yes, Sage uses an old architecture and some fields aren't indexed
I think it's fair to say that some operations are slow, particularly when there are lots of transactions on the system, but equally I'm not convinced, unlike some commentators, that network configuration is not a significant factor. It's also kind of interesting to compare Sage running on an old Win98 box and an all singing and dancing XP box accessing data files on the same server.
It's quite possible that Sage haven't taken the time to test some of the issues in a controlled environment, but we have and significant performance gains are available for relatively little effort.
For example, using a unc path to the Sage data files rather than a mapped drive letter can reduce performance by 50%.
Similiarly Norton AV on the Sage dta files will grind Sage to a halt.
Turn off Opportunistic Locking on the client or server. There are lots of Microsoft Knowledge Base Articles on this subject.
There are another couple of Windows Server Policy settings that have dramatic effects on scrolling through lists of Invoices for example and the speed of reporting but I'm not going to list them here because a) We need to make a living and b) You run the risk of messing up your system if you don't know what you are doing.
You will still need to extract data for some operations because, yes, Sage uses an old architecture and some fields aren't indexed
Sage Line 50 Solution Selling
Having read a few Sage related blogs quite by accident I thought I might as well have a go myself.
A lot of the comment I have seen related to Line 50 seems to miss the basic point that all services / solutions related to a Sage sale (or anything else for that matter) are directly proportional to the price of the product being sold.
If someone buys a £5000 car they aren't going to expect (or pay) the sort of service bills you get for a £30,000 car. Exactly the same principle applies to the computer industry, so, if you want to make more money, start selling a more expensive solution.
A lot of the comment I have seen related to Line 50 seems to miss the basic point that all services / solutions related to a Sage sale (or anything else for that matter) are directly proportional to the price of the product being sold.
If someone buys a £5000 car they aren't going to expect (or pay) the sort of service bills you get for a £30,000 car. Exactly the same principle applies to the computer industry, so, if you want to make more money, start selling a more expensive solution.
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