thewireguys 3 Posted December 15, 2010 Just doing some research on Milestone software and looking to hear what other dealers and/or users like and dislike about it. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
thewireguys 3 Posted December 15, 2010 No one has anything positive to say about Milestone Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Soundy 1 Posted December 15, 2010 Apparently nobody has anything negative to say about them either Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
hardwired 0 Posted December 15, 2010 We've been a Milestone dealer since 2007, and have had a pretty good overall experience with them. We are Exacq certified, too, with good experiences with them, as well. The Milestone "Essential" version has now made it a lot easier to sell, with a MSRP of $50 per channel, and has most features necessary for a smaller system (limited to 26 cameras, and five concurrent users). I happen to like Exacq as well, here are a few points of difference. +'s for Milestone... Essential is cheaper for a small system than Exacq Playback functionality is easier, with more features, with Milestone than Exacq. Viewing over a lower bandwidth (WAN) connection with Exacq client S/W is pretty painful waiting for a clip to buffer, especially megapixel. Milestone allows downsampling the video quality (on a per camera/per user basis, as well), for lower bandwidth connections, so megapixel viewing is easier. +'s for Exacq.... Setup for basic systems can be easier (although Milestone now has a wizard-based setup that helps) Tying multiple sites together is WAY cheaper in Exacq... Milestone requires Enterprise or Corporate for that, with a lot more cost and complexity. Processor overhead is almost nonexistent in Exacq, disk/LAN throughput seems to be the only limitation. Wan viewing through web works on just about any device (web on Milestone requires IE with plugins) Adding/deleting devices is quicker (Milestone requires registering the MAC of devices through their online registration) Both have their ups and downs, we will probably continue to sell both (until something better comes along ) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
personalt 0 Posted December 15, 2010 I am an end user bought the software back in 2004 for a construction job I did. PAid about $2000 at the time for the professional version - 9 camera. At time I bought it becuase it was one of the few IP softwarew packages that could play back multiple camera streams at the same time and keep them in sync. I needed to watch my workers move from floor to floor without losing them. I cant say anything bad about the software. It worked really well and is gentle on the CPU. One thing I didnt like was that your license key was based on mac address. You add/deleta cameras from the website and you only get so many adds/deletes before you have to talk to customer support. What I think they are trying to do is keep you from getting a 8 camera license, loading up 8 cameras, generating a key and then delete them all from the website and generating a new key for another 8 cameras that you put on another server. When I had a few toshiba cameras fail after my PMA ran out I had to ask them for more deletes. They did it for me but I never got a clear answer on how they treated camera deletes/replacements after the PMA expired. They being said, they since backfilled with a few cheaper versions - essential, basic and free version since I bought. The PMAs for those versions are much more reasonable. They even have a free version that is up to 8 cameras, with a 5 day retention limited to one concurrent user. I was looking at using this for a rental building that I own. It seems like this could be a good deal for installers that have customers that the software pushes them over budget. But not sure how you figure out the markup on free software But I guess if I was a dealer and could put a guy into 8 cameras when he wasn't going to buy anything before it could be win/win.. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
thewireguys 3 Posted December 15, 2010 We've been a Milestone dealer since 2007, and have had a pretty good overall experience with them. We are Exacq certified, too, with good experiences with them, as well. The Milestone "Essential" version has now made it a lot easier to sell, with a MSRP of $50 per channel, and has most features necessary for a smaller system (limited to 26 cameras, and five concurrent users). I happen to like Exacq as well, here are a few points of difference. +'s for Milestone... Essential is cheaper for a small system than Exacq Playback functionality is easier, with more features, with Milestone than Exacq. Viewing over a lower bandwidth (WAN) connection with Exacq client S/W is pretty painful waiting for a clip to buffer, especially megapixel. Milestone allows downsampling the video quality (on a per camera/per user basis, as well), for lower bandwidth connections, so megapixel viewing is easier. +'s for Exacq.... Setup for basic systems can be easier (although Milestone now has a wizard-based setup that helps) Tying multiple sites together is WAY cheaper in Exacq... Milestone requires Enterprise or Corporate for that, with a lot more cost and complexity. Processor overhead is almost nonexistent in Exacq, disk/LAN throughput seems to be the only limitation. Wan viewing through web works on just about any device (web on Milestone requires IE with plugins) Adding/deleting devices is quicker (Milestone requires registering the MAC of devices through their online registration) Both have their ups and downs, we will probably continue to sell both (until something better comes along ) Hardwired thank you very much... What about server requirements and hard-drive space. Don't you need a I high speed dally storage bank and an archiving location? Also it's there a limit to how many total FPS you can record per day? Have you ever uses Milestone for a 150+ camera project? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
hardwired 0 Posted December 15, 2010 Milestone does need a separate "first day", and archive space, ideally you configure the fast storage space large enough to hold a full day of recordings, although in Professional and above, you can configure multiple archive times per day. It's a little different way of doing things, but it does allow the use of slower, file based storage (NAS,etc), rather than fast, block level access for all of the storage space, like Exacq requires. Some really old versions had a image/day limit, but no current versions do. The largest current install with Milestone I have is 53 cameras, that is on two different servers, running Enterprise version S/W. The largest single server install has 28 cameras, most megapixel, running about 90Mbps throughput, on a Q6600, 2.4 Ghz quad core with 2GB ram, running about 75% CPU or so. Milestone has a calculator on their site to help configure storage and server requirements. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
