Why does my Atlas 8 perform the same basic tasks much slower than its predecessors?
I have recently started using Atlas 8 after having worked with Atlas 6.2 for seven years, where I built several large HUs that comprise up to 800 primary documents, several hundred codes and thousands of quotes.
After importing these HUs to Atlas 8 and working with another large Project built by my new employer, I found it rather sobering that the very same projects run much slower on the same machine in Atlas 8 than they did in Atlas 6.2 and Atlas 7.
I have also set up a new Project where I have gradually added more (primary) text documents to observe the dramatic impact the increasing number of primary documents in a Project has on the delay time experienced when executing simple tasks.
In a relatively small HU with 128 pdf and rtf documents, creating a new free code or dragging and dropping a code onto a marked paragraph results in a delay of about three to four seconds in Atlas 8! The same operations in the exact same Project cause virtually no delay in Atlas 6.2 on the same machine, a Lenovo Yoga 510 with an i7, 8GB DDR and SSD.
On my team mates’ laptops, HP Elite Books with an i5, the delay amounts to 7 seconds! The very same HU also works better in Atlas 7 on a much older computer.
In order to be able to continue to work without going nuts, I have reduced the large Project we use in our team to the few documents and codes I need for a specific research task. Ones the 30 documents necessary for the task have been coded I merge the mini-project with our master project. Whereas this workaround strategy works for the moment, it ultimately defeats the purpose of having a powerful QDAS.
Being able to manage vast amounts of qualitative, documents and codes and remaining have thus far been the major benefits of Atlas. It would be a pity if the fancy new display and gadgets of Atlas 8 went at the expense of its performance with regards to the most essential functions of QDAS.
I am thankful for any help or feedback.
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