Accounting Speed

The most effective (if not the cheapest) way to speed up the MacNail construction accounting software is to use one of the faster Macs. The Mac II is about four times as fast as a Mac SE or Pac Plus. The IIcx, IIx and SE/30 are about 15% faster than a Mac II, and Macs faster than that are also available

NOTE-- In 2000, MacNail was replaced by Goldenseal construction accounting software. Goldenseal is an integrated program that includes general accounting, job costing, payroll and project billing, plus estimating and other features. Speed is no longer a problem, these days.

If you are using Excel 2.2 on a one-megabyte machine, some operations may slow down drastically because of disk 'thrashing'. Getting extra RAM memory will speed things up to normal. Otherwise, extra memory will have no effect on speed--although it is still very useful.

HINT: A good way to tell if you are 'thrashing'--listen for a faint 'chuga-chuga-chuga' sound from your hard disk during slow operation. There may also be an intermittent flashing light, if your hard disk uses a LED display.

Using MultiFinder, you may also get thrashing problems, leading to slow speed. Reset Excel's memory partition (see page 215) to solve this.