Zotero is unbearably slow - simply unusable

aschurger
For a while now (in spite of updates) Zotero runs unbearably slow for me. I am using Firefox 3.6.16 on an Intel Mac with OS X 10.4.1. For example, I just now pressed the sync button and Firefox just hangs for about 60 seconds (not allowing me to do anything) before the sync icon even started spinning. Also, very often when I move an item into a "group" it can take upwards of 30 seconds (again Firefox hangs and I just have to wait) before I can continue. I'm pretty much ready to drop Zotero altogether. I've also tried importing my EndNote library of about 3,000 items, but Zotero seems to choke when I do this. I can let it run for an hour, or even once I let it run overnight, but in the morning nothing had been imported and Zotero had returned an error message. There is absolutely no reason for this sort of thing to take so long or be so complicated. I used to be able to import 10,000 records into a FoxPro database (not the most sophistical database around) in the blink of an eye. I checked that the file was not corrupt by re-importing it in to EndNote, and that worked fine. I'm sorry to say that Zotero is just not working out for me, as much as I like the concept.
Aaron Schurger
  • fbennett
    Would you like advice from the community, or was that a farewell notice?
  • ajlyon
    Note that Endnote's RIS export is inconsistent and largely undocumented, so we sometimes fail to import it, despite our best efforts (and observance of the specification). The comparison to FoxPro is simply apples-to-oranges-- it has very little in common with Zotero.

    If you're interested in moving to Zotero, we'll need the text of the error message and you'll probably have to pin down the item that's causing the import to fail.

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