Thread Split: 10.3 Issues

[SteveH]

There's a similar problem I encountered on Windows XP SP3 with eSignal 10.3 (latest version):

If you install the Windows XP Power ToY called "Virtual Desktop Manager", which allows you to switch to multiple desktops so you don't have to bring up different applications on top of eSignal's chart windows, you will find that over the course of the day from flipping virtual desktops that, sooner or later, eSignal will completely mess up and you can no longer bring up any pop-up menus or pull down any of the menus from the main window's menu.

Now, eSignal can take a pass on this and say "we don't support Windows Power Toys' Virtual Desktop Manager", but that's a pretty poor excuse. The fact is that there is a bug on eSignal's side and the VDM is bringing out this bug in your software. An application should never have its pulldown menus left completely amputated like this to where you cannot even close the application with an Alt-F4.

I have NO other application that is messing up like this on my PC just because Windows's VDM is installed.

I've said this before and I'll say it again...the quality is going down as the version numbers go up in this software. *Something* happened in the development after 8.0rc2 in the QA process which has essentially made the users of eSignal more like constant beta testers than end-users working with a production-ready version.

My criticism is harsh because versions 7.9 and 8.0 were so much better in reliability than I'm finding with 10.3.

All this aside, I continue to use eSignal because it is by far the best product in the market from the perspective of being extremely easy for me to write versatile scripts for to help me in my trading. I certainly cannot fault them for that. I simply love working with Javascript for chart scripting.

Special Note:

Hats off to ClearPicks in some other threads for having the time and energy to give eSignal EFS's which can reveal the bugs on a consistent basis. You should hire him in the QA dept.

Personally, I'm going back to 8.0rc2 and staying there for another 6-12 months. I don't need a lot of new features. I'd be far more interested in eSignal taking advantage of multiple CPU cores to speed things up.

[Doji3333]

I may have to go back to 8.0 also. I got my new dual-core system setup over the weekend and everything looked fine until this AM. It's slower than my single core system running more charts (the old PC). I don't know if this is an issue with the video card, the system or esignal.

It's an AMD Athlon 2.6 G Dual Core with 4GB ram and pretty well loaded. The old PC is an INTEL 2.4 G single core system with 1GB ram. Funny thing is it actually ran better on the old PC than on the new AMD.

Now to really twist things up.. I have another AMD system (2.8G single core with 2GB ram) and that PC is running more charts/efs than the new dual core and is running/responding BETTER than the dual-core.

I would really like to take advantage of the new esignal, but if my new dual-core system is slower than my old single core systems - it just does not make any sense??

I'll bet 8.0 runs just fine on my dual-core and may give it a try after the markets close. Something has to be going on with regards to 10.3 and what it's doing. There is absolutely no reason why a somewhat loaded dual-core would run slower than an under-loaded single core (running the same 10.3 esignal version)???

[Doji3333]

after an hour+ of an esignal hang on my new dual-core, I finally had to kill it (with the task manager) and try to start over.

when it reloaded, it came up fine. But I have no clue what the problem is?? It seems really odd that my dual core PC keeps hanging and my single core PC keeps running.

Any ideas??

[Doji3333]

May have found something of interest to the developers. When I restarted esignal, the task manager showed 112,??? memory usage. After about 2 minutes, that was up to 118,???. I just had to kill esignal again (after 2 minutes) because it would not respond (again).

I'm going to check a few things on my PC, but this is really odd.

BTW, My Athlon PC is a '64' processor - could that be the problem?

B

[JayF]

Originally posted by SteveH
There's a similar problem I encountered on Windows XP SP3 with eSignal 10.3 (latest version):

If you install the Windows XP Power ToY called "Virtual Desktop Manager", which allows you to switch to multiple desktops so you don't have to bring up different applications on top of eSignal's chart windows, you will find that over the course of the day from flipping virtual desktops that, sooner or later, eSignal will completely mess up and you can no longer bring up any pop-up menus or pull down any of the menus from the main window's menu...

The menu handling is less than optimal in the eSignal software and this seems like a result of that. We are actively working on a completely new version of eSignal that has a new framework to handle menus, toolbars, window functions, etc... in fact its the same framework used by Skype and Google Chrome. It will also have a number of other improvements which we'll be able to share as we get closer to its release.

The main point is, we know of these issues, and are actively working on addressing them.

[Doji3333]

Jay,

I went to Nvidia and downloaded newer drivers (March 3, 2009) for my PC/motherboard. It looks like it is working better now.

I'll keep you posted as to any other problems.

Hate to say it, but it looks like my problems might have been caused by the drivers I had installed originally.

B