vBulletin ignores Youtuber with 1,1 million followers

Youtuber Louis Rossmann from Rossmann Repair Group calls out for help in a video to 1,1 million followers that his commercial forum hosted by vBulletin gets no support since January. His support ticket shows that he waits days, sometimes weeks for an answer and the issue still gets no meaningful answer.

vBulletin ignores customer

Lightroom and AMD Ryzen 3900X

A field report after upgrading my Lightroom PC to the brand new CPU Ryzen 3900X, a beast of a CPU featuring 12 cores and 24 thread. Let’s compare the configurations:

  • Old configuration: Ryzen 1700X (8 cores, 16 threads), 32 GB RAM, 1 M2. NVM SSD, 1 SATA SSD
  • New configuration: Ryzen 3900X (12 cores, 24 threads), 64 GB RAM, 2 M2. NVM SSds

The performance gain is very noticable! On the old PC I often faced brief delays when scrolling through a heap of pictures. The delay was always very short (< 1 sec) but it was very annoying and destroyed the fast workflow. My wife even started using Photomechanic for doing a preselection as PM is very fast.
On the new PC all delays are gone and the import is blazingly fast. I tested 100 RAW files (Nikon Z7, about 56 MB per file) and the import was done in 2 minutes 26 seconds – including rendering 1:1 previews.

Why fast M.2 PCIe SSDs? Of course the difference to regular SATA SSDs isnt noticable during daily routine, but the surcharge for M.2 PCIe is getting cheaper every day and there are big performance gains during backup or copying large files.
Why 64 GB RAM? Currently RAM is extremly cheap and RAM that isn’t used by Lightroom will be used by Windows for caching.
What graphics adapter? In my experience this doesn’t matter much. Performance gains are minimal and from time to time this LR feature isnt very stable.

Test: LR import with Ryzen 3900X

Lightroom CC/7 and how Adobe sees the world

Let’s see:

  • No updates for Lightroom 6 after 2017
  • “Lightroom CC” becomes “Lightroom CC Classic”, is available only via subscription (*cough* ransomware *cough*) and its future is uncertain
  • Adobe introducdes a new “Lightroom CC” that has flaws like subscription model, no printing (why on earth somebody should print a photo???), forces you to upload your pictures to Adobe (ever heard about photogs with slow internet?), problems with keywords, no map module, no tethering, no multiple catalogs, and so on…

I see sales for Capture One Pro skyrocketing. Or look for alternatives like RawTherapee, Darktable, ACDsee,…

My personal answer is: Adobe, rot in hell! I will stop buying Adobe software.

Just think about this: some time in the future Adobe will “concentrate on the cloud version” and stop developing the “Classic” one – simply to reduce development costs and to increase profits from storage options. Simply say no to someone who helds hostage years of your work.

What Adobe thinks about their customers

Adobe recently announced that they will no longer develop the Creative Suite software so the “Creative Cloud” with its monthly subscription will be the only way to get access to newer versions of Photoshop etc. Without no doubt, Adobe wants to boost its revenue and without no doubt, they ignore the needs of their customers. If you as an Adobe customer feel that this move is against your needs, tell them.

If you want to know what Adobes CEO Shantanu Narayen thinks about customers and their opinion see the video below. Basically, the “dialogue” works this way:

  • “How can you justifiy the higher price of CS6?” “Adobe Creative Cloud is the future.”
  • “Australians are simply being price gouged.” “Adobe’s Creative Cloud is the future.”
  • “What about people who want to buy the software?” “Adobe’s Creative Cloud is the future.”
  • “Don’t you think customers will get angry?” “Adobe’s Creative Cloud is the future.”
  • “Blah blah blah” “Adobe’s Creative Cloud is the future.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juM46ny1WhM

vBulletin 5 Connect Beta

What you can expect from vBulletin 5 Connect Beta:

  • vb5 is 3x slower than vb4 – and no, that’s not a server issue. See below screenshot of a post that was removed by vBulletin staff (EDIT: its now back again)
  • vb5 puts a massive load on the database (if you are logged in, 117-121 queries for a single page)
  • A HTML/CSS mess never seen before (40 CSS classes on a single HTML tag)
  • Many features are non-intuitive (e.g. the notifications)
  • It will lack a lot of features when released (stated by vBulletin staff on their forums)
  • Upgrading from vb4 costs you $209 compared to $249 for a new license
  • The end of free support tickets – you only get 1 month free ticket support, after that you have to pay for support tickets at $199 per year

And to top this, Internet Brands has killed their longtime German vBulletin distributor known for superb support.

As a vBulletin customer using the software since its early days (2001) I have to admit, this is a new low mark for Internet Brands.

vBulletin 5 performance