Can I honestly reccommend customers to use your product?

[DonkeyToss]

I am so frustrated with Flash player.  I run a computer repair service in Northern California, in the last two years I have noticed an alarming trend, upwards of 50% of my service calls are for people with extremely fast PC's that cannot even watch a youtube video because flash is so choppy and freezes constantly.  I have searched and tried ALL available solutions (updating, disabling h/a, different browsers, etc) NOTHING fixes it.  These PC's are quad core with 16gb Ram, ss hard drives that boot in 20 seconds, they can play any game under the sun, but apparently Adobe can't create a program that seemingly worked fine 10 years ago, but now SUPERCOMPUTERS cannot run it?  Get it together Adobe, otherwise Silverlight is gonna win.  Seriously, there have even been Internet polls, 80% of Flash users are UNHAPPY and your patches do nothing to fix the PROBLEM that all of them are HAVING.  What gives? I'm this close to reccommedning my customers NOT use flash due to it's volatile unreliability.

Also, I've tried other browsers, I've tried updating gfx drivers, I've tried a fresh install.  I've tried EVERYTHING and now my customers are attempting to insinuate that the PC's I build are not very "powerful" your shoddy software is hurting my business, I am 100% willing to make this a legal matter as your software has had this problem for over 2 years now and nothing has been done to fix it.

It's really disheartening considering I used to think Adobe was the greatest company with the most promise.

Also, tech support is TERRIBLE, I just sat on the phone for over an HOUR waiting, and waiting, and eventually hung up.  This was at 10 AM western on a MONDAY morning.  I even chose the option to make it look like I actually was PURCHASING your products, sat on the line for 30 minutes and said "forget it" if this is how you treat your paying customers, I think I will start NOT reccommmending your software and not including it on my PC's and have customers sign a contract them know that "Adobe Flash Player is not covered by our warranty, any problems or slowdowns in performance caused by this software is not our responsibility.  Install at your own risk."

I've also recently begun reccommending my angry customers come here to vent their anger.

Fix it or you lose another fan.  I'm 100% serious.  I will remove it and never look back.  I don't care if I never use youtube again, FIX YOUR SOFTWARE!

[pwillener]

Just posting as another user.  I have used Flash Player for a very long time; I watch lots of videos, but I have never experienced any such problem.  And I do not have a supercomputer; just an ordinary laptop and a number of older desktop machines.  None of these exhibit anything strange when playing videos.

So what is causing this behavior on some machines, but not on others?  Slow Internet connection?

If I could reproduce this on any system I would try to observe the process with Process Monitor.  I think that "choppy playing" and "freezing" would be caused by some wait for resources; Process Monitor could probably identify what is happening.

Hope that you also get some input from Adobe, but my guess is that they also cannot reproduce this behavior.

[DonkeyToss]

I too have modern flash installed on an old P3 500 mhz machine with 256 mb of ram, and yes, it runs fine.

As far as this being limited to "my machine"  could not be farther from the truth, do a simple google search for "flash is choppy" "Flash is stuttering" there are MILLIONS of responses, and I've also spent time on Chrome and Firefox forums, it's LITERALLY the #1 complaint.  THis is a WELL KNOWN issue, this is not some problem that "adobe can't seem to recreate" over 80% of their users report this.  There are even people that have offered solutions at one time or another that ACTUALLY did fix the problem, and Adobe's next patches SEALED these fixes off and made them unavailable, WHILE, at the same time, NOT FIXING the problem.  (one of them invovled editing a text file and REALLY did work, I've found now that this txt file has been hidden by adobe, and is now "read only" and if you change it, the save doesn't work, it just stays at their setting...)  Thanks adobe.

I built a new system TODAY, just finished the install of the updated gfx card driver, everything is updated (and I do mean EVERYTHING) and the customer is standing RIGHT Next to me as I type this to see that I'm trying to solve the problem.  Chrome, choppy.  IE, Choppy.  Firefox... OMG don't even get me started on Firefox the worst of them all.  Scroll the mouse while flash is in use on the page?  Sound stutters, video skips.  Open a new tab, expect to have choppy audio for the next 5 seconds.  This is a top of the line Creative sound card, top of the line processor, massive amount of ram, HUGE hard drive.  Seriously?  Why can my dinosar run this and new windows 7 n 8 PC's cant?

I'm going through my invoices now, I have over 480 service calls in the last two years that were DIRECTLY due to this issue, that is out of 1200 ish total.  Between 3 TECHS, between TWO stores.  Between TWO completely different towns.

Do a google search, it's not just me, it's like every 3rd person under the sun : )

** BTW, my old P3 is hooked to my big screen, I use it to watch stuff online, because it actually does it without a hitch, compared to my laptop, my 3 desktops, my gaming system.  I don't use any of them for Flash related business, because it just makes my computers look bad and infuriates me.

[chris.campbell]

If you have a reproducible steps then I would highly recommend reporting this a bug over at bugbase.adobe.com.  This FAQ has a link to a page that contains a few troubleshooting steps (update drivers, disable flash hw acceleration, etc.) but mainly details what information we'll need (url, dxdiag report, steps to repro).

How do I troubleshoot and report problems with Flash Player Video?

Like Pat, I use Flash on multiple computers (new and old) and I don't see these problems.  I'm not saying that they don't exist, but the exact cause is not always so simple.

As for the Firefox issue, try temporarily disabling protected mode to see if that makes a difference.

How do I troubleshoot Flash Player's protected mode for Firefox?

[DonkeyToss]

[garbage post removed]

Message was edited by: Pat Willener

[pwillener]

Watch your language, creep, or I will have you banned from these forums!

This topic is now locked.