Are you happy with Sage dependability?

[cfcrafting]

So I bought sage sometime last year and it worked fine for about 3 months. All of a sudden I started experiencing favorites not recording, choppy playback, etc. It seemed for everything I fixed some other problem would take it's place like a lemon car. I've never once gotten an email back from the supposed technical support people. In my opinion 90% of the topics in this forum are dedicated to fixing some sort of problem with the software. I paid I $70 for software that works 50% of the time and that I have to continually troubleshoot. Do you think a company that intends to sell software should make some sort of gaurantee that it works atleast 95% of the time?

[mlbdude]

Originally Posted by cfcrafting

Do you think a company that intends to sell software should make some sort of gaurantee that it works atleast 95% of the time?

Probably not. Most likey you have some problem with your system creating this instability. Granted, the developers don't have an exact copy of your PC so there could be soemthing in the app natively incompatible with your PC.

Also, since this is a support forum you are going to see issues being reported. This is not a place to come and hang out and chat with friends.

I can only speak personally, but the 7 or 8 systems I have put together running Sage are all running great. The oldest has been going for a couple of years now.

[aperry]

Both of the systems I maintain work pretty well. The occasional reboot is needed to clear things up, but generally, they work well.

[amac]

Overall I would say I'm happy. I have gotten some emails back from Sage support. I would say I'm concerned at what seems to be extensive feature creep in the beta releases without first nailing down existing features.

In most software companies, an alpha release would present new functionality while a beta typically doesn't try to introduce new features but rather keep testing to make sure the last set of new features introduced work as expected.

While new features keep a product viable, it would be nice to see 2 streams of releases. One that fixes bugs to released products and one that adds new functionality.

But that's my ideal world. Of course, that requires more developer resources that smaller companies can't necessarily do.

For the price, I'm quite happy. Sage's price is reasonable. To date, there are no additional fees for new features. My family is happy. And of course we're not forced to use further beta releases.

Note:
I too am occasionally (1 of 10) seeing favorites not recorded (while reading in the forums that Sage has 'optimized' its engine to determine when to schedule a favorite to record). O.K., it's likely a bug and so should be fixed. Probably should report it.

I've got 2 bugs reported and outstanding. One of which I think (hope) will be fixed (playback stutters caused by the waking of the seeker), another that I've developed my own work around.

[cfcrafting]

Originally Posted by mlbdude

Probably not. Most likey you have some problem with your system creating this instability. Granted, the developers don't have an exact copy of your PC so there could be soemthing in the app natively incompatible with your PC.

Also, since this is a support forum you are going to see issues being reported. This is not a place to come and hang out and chat with friends.

I can only speak personally, but the 7 or 8 systems I have put together running Sage are all running great. The oldest has been going for a couple of years now.

The main issue is it worked flawlessly for months. I haven't changed anything on the pc, I just use it for sage and internet access. I've reached the point of aggrivation with the software that I have stopped troubleshooting it and just hope it records with no error. I've even stopped using it for weeks because it's been such a pain to deal with and I just don't have the time. As far a paying for something and dependability being nil, imagine if you bought a tv but it only turn on 50% of the time. Would you be like 'oh well, guess I'm not watching tv tonight' or take it back for a refund.

[blade]

I've been running Sage for 1 year and 3 months. It has crashed once during that time. I'm pretty sure it was ShowAnalyzer and not Sage that caused the crash. I rebooted and all was fine. As far as I can tell Sage has never missed a recording and the only time I reboot is due to power outages or when I upgrade. Typically my Sage computer runs 2-4 months between reboots.

If everything was stable then suddenly began giving problems and you didn't change anything, it's possible that you have some hardware that's going bad. I know a couple of people who complained of problems with Sage later found it was due to their hard drive going bad. Another one had a fan die, which led to stability problems. Of course an automatic windows or java update, or a virus could also cause problems.

[aperry]

Just out of curiosity, have you defragmented your hard drive recently? Also, what is your cluster size on the drive that recordings go to (should be 64kb)? Have you upgraded any software on your system shortly before you started experiencing problems (for example, I recently upgraded to Nero 7, part of which was Nero Scout which caused problems for me, so I disabled Scout).

Another thing you might try is doing a fresh install of everything. Windows sometimes gets hosed, sometimes enough to cause weird things like you're describing, but still runs.

I know that you stated that nothing has changed on your system, but assuming you did not change the version of Sage that you were running, something must have changed. And there are only about a billion things it could be.

I hope you get it worked out. You might try sending another note to the support guys to remind them that you have not heard back from them.

*edit* Looks like blade and I were thinking along the same lines...

[Motofreak75]

Originally Posted by amac

I would say I'm concerned at what seems to be extensive feature creep in the beta releases without first nailing down existing features.

Bingo we have a winner


I dont mind all the beta releases to fix the issues, but work on getting existing features working correctly & stop adding new issues to the plate.

I already have enough on my plate thank you very much time submit another EOS bug again

[lotusvball]

Personally mine has worked like a charm for about a year now.

About software:
I remember Bill Gates saying something like if Microsoft made cars they would all cost under $1000. But a car CEO shot back and said and they would all break down on the high for no reason at all while going somewhere important and would require a complete reboot just to get it working again.

Would we accept this kind of product from a car manufacturer, I think not, then we should really not except it from the software developer.

[SprDtyF350]

Originally Posted by cfcrafting

So I bought sage sometime last year and it worked fine for about 3 months. All of a sudden I started experiencing favorites not recording, choppy playback, etc. It seemed for everything I fixed some other problem would take it's place like a lemon car. I've never once gotten an email back from the supposed technical support people. In my opinion 90% of the topics in this forum are dedicated to fixing some sort of problem with the software. I paid I $70 for software that works 50% of the time and that I have to continually troubleshoot. Do you think a company that intends to sell software should make some sort of gaurantee that it works atleast 95% of the time?

Do you have automatic updates turned on? Sounds to me that if working well for awhile and then went bad something got updated. I turn off automatic everything on my Sage server. If it aint broke, I sure don't want to automatically break it....

[Jesse]

Hi,

Working great for me. I am having some issues that require me to shut down and re-start sage every couple of days. I have pretty much narrowed it down to my un-willingness to stop using FSE . If I disable FSE it goes for weeks on end with no trouble.

No offense, but if you are surfing the net with this machine and allowing windows and or Java updates then things can and do change.

Good luck and dont give up. It works well for lots of folks and will for you too.

Jesse

[mike_15]

I have mine running a around 90% reliability. I have a few glitches, but don't feel like debugging, and am satisfied with it as such.

Do you think a company that intends to sell software should make some sort of gaurantee that it works atleast 95% of the time?

I think you will be waiting a long time for the first company to do so.

The only way I can see that being possible is to have the software company have complete control over what hardware is to be used.

There is a balance,
You can get high reliability with a full system in a box setup, no hardware options, no software options.
Or you have a lot of features and flexibility with bring your own hardware but lose some reliability. I think Sage is somewhere in between.

[jominor]

Originally Posted by cfcrafting

So I bought sage sometime last year and it worked fine for about 3 months. All of a sudden I started experiencing favorites not recording, choppy playback, etc. It seemed for everything I fixed some other problem would take it's place like a lemon car. I've never once gotten an email back from the supposed technical support people. In my opinion 90% of the topics in this forum are dedicated to fixing some sort of problem with the software. I paid I $70 for software that works 50% of the time and that I have to continually troubleshoot. Do you think a company that intends to sell software should make some sort of gaurantee that it works atleast 95% of the time?

Well, strictly speaking, that is what forums are for. Problems. I rarely feel like saying "Hey everyone, all is well."

I run my systems 24/7 and it very, very, rarely has problems. Also, as a writer of software, I KNOW that things occur and such a guarantee is downright foolish. I have customers who have problems that eventually can be traced to their own actions. Should I be responsible for their downtime?

[jominor]

Originally Posted by cfcrafting

The main issue is it worked flawlessly for months. I haven't changed anything on the pc, I just use it for sage and internet access. I've reached the point of aggrivation with the software that I have stopped troubleshooting it and just hope it records with no error. I've even stopped using it for weeks because it's been such a pain to deal with and I just don't have the time. As far a paying for something and dependability being nil, imagine if you bought a tv but it only turn on 50% of the time. Would you be like 'oh well, guess I'm not watching tv tonight' or take it back for a refund.

Well, a TV isn't software, is it? One model is just like every other model, isn't it. A TV isn't expected to work with hundreds of different outlets, types of power, and exotic configurations, is it?

I hate stupid car and toaster analogies. All a TV has to do is receive a signal and display it. All a toaster has to do is toast bread at a certain temperature for a certain length of time.

PCs are far more sophisticated. If simplicity is desire, by a console, TV, and Tivo. If flexibility is desired by a PC and use Sage. Their is no such thing as a free lunch.

[jominor]

Originally Posted by lotusvball

Personally mine has worked like a charm for about a year now.

About software:
I remember Bill Gates saying something like if Microsoft made cars they would all cost under $1000. But a car CEO shot back and said and they would all break down on the high for no reason at all while going somewhere important and would require a complete reboot just to get it working again.

Would we accept this kind of product from a car manufacturer, I think not, then we should really not except it from the software developer.

If you knew how to write software, you wouldn't utter such nonsense. It is mathematically IMPOSSIBLE to create software without bugs. Software development by its very nature has a degree of uncertainty, if only in terms of combinations of hardware upon which software must run, combinations of software upon which software must interact, and USERS.

Very smart people have been trying for decades to apply engineering principles to software development and we still haven't done it successfully. Assembling cars is repeatable, yet cars still have recalls. It is extremely difficult to make software development a repeatable process.

[skenzer]

I haven't used SageTV for long but it sure seems stable to me.

I wanted to touch on a quick point about software stability though. I've been in the IT business for over 10 years now and there's one thing I can say with 100% certainty. Unless the software has major flaws in it or it simply is poorly written, it will be stable until there are other changes made to the pc that in turn cause instability.
If I could wipe all of the pc's here at work every morning and put a fresh build of XP on them along with the needed work software, I would be virtually out of a job.
My point being, 99% of the software related work orders that we receive are simply caused by changes PEOPLE make to their pc's...nothing more, nothing less.

I guess the question, "how stable is SageTV" in my opinion should be changed to "how stable is YOUR pc?"

Skenz

[roxy99]

Originally Posted by skenzer

I haven't used SageTV for long but it sure seems stable to me.

I wanted to touch on a quick point about software stability though. I've been in the IT business for over 10 years now and there's one thing I can say with 100% certainty. Unless the software has major flaws in it or it simply is poorly written, it will be stable until there are other changes made to the pc that in turn cause instability.
If I could wipe all of the pc's here at work every morning and put a fresh build of XP on them along with the needed work software, I would be virtually out of a job.
My point being, 99% of the software related work orders that we receive are simply caused by changes PEOPLE make to their pc's...nothing more, nothing less.

I guess the question, "how stable is SageTV" in my opinion should be changed to "how stable is YOUR pc?"

Skenz

That may be true but what about when SageTV is installed, say version 3, and it works great on my PC. I change nothing on my PC but 'uppgrade?' to version 4. Now version 4 becomes the variable not my PC's configuration. Suddenly it turns out that version 4 reveals a bug with config.

The moral : Don't upgrade the software unless you need. Don't alter your PC's config unless you need to. Amec is correct 'feature creep is to be avoided.

[domc]

I have to reboot at least once a day and defrag every 5-7 days to keep it stable.

[stevech]

I've used it for 3 months or so. Runs on a dedicated XP Pro PC (AMD2400, 512 RAM). No HDTV. I don't run ANY other software on that PC - other than a VNC server and Acronis auto-backup via WiFi. I have auto-update off.

No crashes, stable.

One standing problem is a once a week or so need to reload the media player, using the GUI, to overcome a slo-mo playback problem that Sage says they can't recreate.

I don't reboot the PC very often.

I too wish they'd clean up the user interface - the menus are illogical and take more button pushes than necessasry for common actions. And I too am concerned that the developers are intrigued with next-gen features that few really want, and need to ensure they pay attention to supporting/refining the popular product.

All in all, I'm happy.

----------
PS: re Software Engineering: You've heard this one? If Microsoft Made Cars, We'd Have To Reboot At Each Red Light.
(IMO Microsoft's problem is too may cooks in the kitchen - in software development.)

[lotusvball]

Originally Posted by jominor

If you knew how to write software, you wouldn't utter such nonsense. It is mathematically IMPOSSIBLE to create software without bugs. Software development by its very nature has a degree of uncertainty, if only in terms of combinations of hardware upon which software must run, combinations of software upon which software must interact, and USERS.

Very smart people have been trying for decades to apply engineering principles to software development and we still haven't done it successfully. Assembling cars is repeatable, yet cars still have recalls. It is extremely difficult to make software development a repeatable process.

BTW, I am a software developer.