Performance Question

[longncsu]

I am running FM Server 5.0 on a PII, NT Server. The clients on the LAN are G3/G4 iMac's. Every now and then I take a copy the database with me on my laptop (PIII, WINXP) and use it . I have notice the performance is slower on my laptop than on the LAN. The biggest difference is I don't use FM Server on my laptop, but it seems like the laptop should still have better performance. I have also tried it on a P4 and PowerBook G4, both slower than the LAN. Is this normal, should I be concerned? Are there any good benchmark tools I can test my database on?

[Anatoli]

IMHO Laptops/notebooks have much slower disks, that servers

[longncsu]

That really doesn't answer my quesiton. I am aware that laptops/notebooks can be slower than desktops. In fact the P4 I mentioned before is a desktop. The only real difference between the Server and the P4, besides the CPU, is the Server is a 7200RPM SCSI and the P4 is a 7200RPM IDE. I thought there might be design issue I have overlooked.

[Anatoli]

It does. But only partially. Disk drives in mobile units and some desktops are only 4+K RPM.

Secondly -- SCSI is 1.5-2 times faster than IDE. If you have the P4 with 7200.

Thirdly -- I was trying to sell the idea some 1-2 years ago here, that when FM Server access the data and sends the data over network it is usually faster, than local HD and local FM client.

Furthermore, because FM client gets the data without local CPU processing from Server, server IS faster in supplying the data and FM Client is only processing the presentation of data.

On local machine FM client makes the request, must do search through indexes and extract the data for presentation engine in FM. That usually takes much more time. Especially on Mac OS, because of nonexistent preemptive multitasking.

Some people from these forums, which I otherwise respect very much didn't believed that concept, you just discovered

[longncsu]

Thanks, I didn't know what was actually going on underneath the covers but that makes sense.