I hope that my suggestions are not based on not knowing all features.
Well, here what I think after a week of usage in a approximate 10 user setting (of 25 total).
We are using MSN here atm. but I think our messages should not traffel through the entire world plus America to write a note to a person who sits 2 meters in front of you.
Thats the reason, why I trial out spark/wildfire.
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Everyone here has 5 years of knowledge HOW a IM tool works. It would be a great deal to disable this MONSTER reminder from spark “That it is still running” on setup. Its way to big and I am not sure, but it returns from time to time. (IS there a counter and it stops saying that it is still running after a certain logins?)
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Because its a java programm memory usage is … huge! 33 MB for Spark (holy shit?), … oh now 38MB without having chatted a single line. Wildfire uses 45MB plus 35MB from Mysql on our server. Would not be so bad, if there was’'nt our SQL server 2000 installed too which already takes ~1Gbyte of ram.
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The update function (actually seen at 1.0.4 -> 1.1) is only usable by login IN spark. Here at our company, we have restricted accounts and me as admin account who can install software. Thus, I have a) to log in to install it on a computer OR to use the download (which I used ofc)
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a Wildfire function to spread the update would be nice too. May be there is a way to update the client if he is loged in as restrickted user. (I mean Wildfire is running as admin … thus could be possible and would save some traffik).
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language packs for spark would be nice.
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File Transfer: One of the best features for me, I don’'t have it checked out so far very much, but a few things about it.
- It would be nice if you can set up an ammount of space on the wildfire server as temporary holder for files, THUS you can “send” a file to a person which is not logged in. But if this person logs in sometime later, he has on its queue a waiting file transfer. Just as a normal message. (To make that feature enjoyable (also for admins) there should be a timelimit settable by the sender (such as “Waiting for accept transfer for 10 day, than delete file from server.”) and ofc, the reciver should have the options to: a) accept and delete from server; accept and keep for ? days on server; refuse and keep o server for ? days, refuse and delete from server.
The original sender should get a feedback message what the reciver has choosed to do with his transfer. Just like: “PersonA has successfully downloaded your file /blabla.exe/”
Some other stuff about file transfers. At the moment it looks like the downloads are keeps in the user profile and it seems that it cannot be changed (the download button always points to that directory).
We here use Server side profiles, thus files which are downloaded are always saved back to the server and sync. every time. If there is’'nt a way to say stuff like : “Save here …” with a chooser dialog, please add this. Most office users here are lazy and do not think about Administration stuff, such as delete unnessesary files e-mails and so on.
Ok, so far my suggestions and feedback.