Tech Forum

Might it be possible to provide an option to postpone large MLS downloads instead of forcing them through on the next Send/Receive?
What I am envisioning is a dialog box that says something like, "We need to send you a 2MB file. Do you wish to proceed with that now?"
On numerous occasions, I have done a "last minute" Send/Receive prior to running to my next meeting. I never know when I launch communication if I am going to be online for 2 minutes or an hour. There are times I don't have an hour, and it would be nice to defer that until another time. Some indication of estimated total connect time would be much appreciated.

Barring that, a complimentary option would be: Send/Receive, then logoff, and shutdown the computer. I could then leave the computer running and it would self terminate when completed.

On Sunday, I started a session which included a 1652KB download. The progress bar got to around 880KB and then stalled. I watched it for 10 minutes and it never changed. I finally cancelled and tried again. The same thing happened. I was about to cancel again, when I got interrupted by someone coming into the office. Five minutes later, it completed WITHOUT the progress bar ever progressing past 880KB. Having watched it closer the second time, here is what I observed. The progress bar updated at 55KB, 110KB, 220KB, 440KB, and 880KB. I think I see a definite 2X pattern here. So when I cancelled the first time, I was probably almost finished, but I was done in by my impatience. I understand that updating the progress bar carries some overhead, but I think it should be updated a couple of times per minute as a minimum. Otherwise there is no indication that any progress is being made.

wa7jos wrote:Otherwise there is no indication that any progress is being made.

What I do, is if I'm running WinXP, is fire up Task Manager and then go to the "Networking" tab. You can see the transfer taking place there. No idea how long it will take, but it's better then the LEDs we used to have on the external modems. At least you know things are happening.

Although it may cause you more grief when you discover how inefficient the transfer process is.

Also in task manager you can see the CPU being used (and if you add the column the network reads and writes). But I still agree that the MLS progress bar shouldn't go in steps of 2 since that will cause most people to think the program has stalled. (And as the file becomes larger we start getting huge discrepancies, you see that you downloaded 1.5 MB over 20 mins but you won't see any progress for another 20 mins, after that no notification for 40 mins and so on.)

The next major release of MLS (planned to be released before November) will notify the user of large downloads and allow the user to defer the download to another time.

Our clerks office houses three wards. We have talked often of purchasing a DSL connection and sharing the costs. But as clerks we know that will never happen. But an advisory of when downloads are going to be made available, and being able to opt out of the download until we have time to baby sit the machine would be very helpful.

The man power cost of having such slow connectivity is a shame.

We have two wards in our building and in one of our classrooms we have setup FH class with DSL. Agreeing with "the need for speed" is there a way for those wards that have DSL to down load that way instead of dail-up?

liver9 wrote:is there a way for those wards that have DSL to down load that way instead of dail-up?

Step one is to load the secure Desktop 5.5. This came out in the last month or so. Unless that is done, connection is strictly prohibited. You'll know if you've had it loaded. It reformats the drive and repartitions it into two drives.

Step two - wait for word from official channels. I seeing things that show it's coming, but we need to give everyone time to get in sync so everyone is on the same page.

If you you're just wanting to download the MLS version updates, yes, that can be done. When a new version is available, instructions are sent via MLS to the stake clerk. Notification is sent to all units.



"Patience is learning to hide your impatience." - Elder Jacob de Jager