Network/multiuser questions

[csjodin]

I am going to be setting up Peachtree Complete 2002 on a network. I'm just wondering what your experiences are with different network setups. I'd like to just stay with a peer-to-peer network. Our computers are running Windows 98SE. Has anyone had any problems with this setup or have any words of caution.

Also, I know that Peachtree recommends a maximum of 5 concurrent users. What happens if we have more than 5. Is there a chance of data corruption, etc. or is it just a performance issue. Most of the time, we will have 5 or less users, but there may occasionally be 6 or 7. What kind of problems (if any) can I anticipate?

Any words or wisdom would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Carmen.

[Jacky Tse]

Peachtree works fine with peer-to-peer network. Although the recommend user level is 5, it can work well with more users. We've a client using Peachtree with even 13 stations!

In our experience, we found that Peachtree is very sensitive to the reliablility of network. So, be careful in choosing network hardware, esp. network card. Ensure the cablings, switches etc. are good.

Of course a peer-to-peer network's performance is not as good as client-server, but you still can do something to improve it. For example, the station storing the Peachtree database should be with better performance. Use a faster machine, and also a faster disk, may be you would like SCIS disk.

One trouble with peer-to-peer is that the station acts as "server" needs to be ON all the time for other stations to access. But, as you know WIN98SE is not good enough without frequent reboot. Sometimes, we found other stations lost the drive mappings and cause troubles to the users. So, you may like to make a login script ( just a batch file ) to make sure every time the mapping to the share Peachtree database exist.

There're more....If you like to contact me, you're welcome
jacky@berfield.com.hk

[csjodin]

Jacky,

Thanks for the information. If I understand you correctly, by using a better performance computer for the station which stores the database, then overall performance will be better.

Also, can I run a better version of Windows on the computer that stores the database (e.g Windows 2000 or Windows NT), but still run Windows 98SE on all other stations. Will this improve the stability?

Thanks for any info...

Carmen.

[Jacky Tse]

Yes. I think Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP Professional are good choices. Both performance and stability will be much improved, though not perfect.

If your budget for workstations is limited, I suggest you to think about invest on RAM and network card for your workstations. We've clients using 3COM network cards and very stable. If your workstations will concurrently run many applications, better to have more than 64MB RAM.

It's better no network than a network with bad cablings, so besure you've check all the cablings are good.

[csjodin]

Jacky,

Thanks...I think I will go with the 3com network cards as you suggest. Our workstations have 128mb ram, so hopefully, that will be ok.

Thanks again,
Carmen.

[Jacky Tse]

Always welcome.

[Robert Walraven]

Also be sure you keep your systems defragmented. There have been cases reported in the Peachtree newsgroup where data corruption in Peachtree was determined to be directly related to badly fragmented systems. For Win98 and Win2K you can use the defragmenter that comes with the system. For WinNT I'd recommend using Diskeeper.

[PPIE]

Make sure you don't plan to run multiple sessions of Peachtree on one machine. It will not work with 2002 where their is a work around for 2000.

We needed to do that on our server.. big problem :(

PPIE