I am completely done with Photomechanic.

[Dave_W]

After using Photomechanic extensively for the past 7 years (between 500k and 1 million images per year) I am officially done with this program.

I have spent dozens of hours, spent thousands of dollars on new computers, dozens of emails back and forth with tech support, hours on the phone, screensharing, with them even recreating the problems I'm facing on their own machines, and not having a solution to the problem.

I am currently running an international hockey tournament, I'm shooting six consecutive 14 hour days, shooting 10,000 images per day, and Photomechanic does nothing but hang and stall.  I can't ingest, I've tried every conceivable set up that tech support has offered and suggested.  And it still does not work.

I now have to use Windows Explorer to transfer all files from the reader to my hard drive, and then use LR to cull, sort, rate, and rename.

3 of my colleagues working with me experience the same problems and have given up on Photomechanic.   It might be fine for small volume photographers, or Mac computers, but large volume Windows PC users, this program has gone to $hit. It used to be the be-all and end-all. Now it's worthless to me.

7 years!!

[Eric]

I am not going to tell you that you are wrong. I WILL tell you that in my case the solution was moving over to the M4 MBP when it came out.  There is 100% something that PM on Windows with either Thunderbolt or USB 3.2 ports just fails. It just does.  Like you I had their people remote into my Windows machines and watch and poke around. Ingesting large volumes would result in 25% to 50% of the read cycles on the TB port to just idle. You could (can) see it. It reads a chunk of files... stops.... reads.... stops...  on my Mac... it reads.... and reads... and reads until the ingest is done.

As a sanity check I loaded a card with files and arranged to run a semi-scientific experiment before an NFL game with a few friends. We had two Dell laptops running the current Windows release, a MBP with an M2 as well as a fully maxed out MBP with the M3 (the M4 had not been released yet). My i7 64gb 2tb ssd XPS with TB4 ports took 17 minutes to ingest the test card. The M2 machine took SEVEN minutes and the M3 machine did the ingest in just over 4 minutes. All machines read the same card with the same Thunderbolt reader.   When we were done with the experiment I decided to wait and order the new M4 MBP that was just 3 months away... and have never been happier.  I am 1oooo % convinced that PM simply isn't reading the ports at their native speed for Windows machines.

[Max Lemesh]

sadly I had similar experiences with windows about 15 years ago.
Thankfully I'm on Mac ever since.

Also, nothing to do with photo mechanic, just windows sucking in general )