Installed the beta last Friday.
Background: I have used the previous version only a little, so there is a decent chance I am using it suboptimally and the performance issues I see are a result of user error.
Use case: We have data in shapefiles representing streets in the USA and Canada. Supporting these feature classes and shapefiles are extra tables about maneuvers, etc. The data is stored centrally and is read only. I am evaluating ArcExplorer Desktop as a potential replacement for the couple copies of ArcView 3.3 the field collection guys use to study some tricky intersections. They load up the appropriate shapefile (usually half a million to a million streets) in AV 3.3 very quickly and the guys zoom to their intersection and use a combination of Identify, symbology, and occasionally relates to figure things out. We'd like to move off AV 3.3 before it stops working with some version of Windows. We'd also like to eventually move the data to geodatabase.
Here's what I've tried: keeping the data in central shapefiles, local shapefiles, local filegeodatabase, local layer package.
Here's what I've seen: ArcExplorer draws the shapes very, very slowing, spending a large amount of time telling me it is "streaming." I can start AV 3.3 and look at the data in the same time I am waiting for the data to render. The field guys will never accept this performance hit. In just a little looking, I was also not able to figure out how to handle the user need to look at other tables by relate. I didn't spend much time on it, though, because the slow drawing was a total deal breaker.
I assume I am doing something incorrectly, but if the performance difference is unavoidable, I think our guys will want to stick with AV 3.3 - it is familiar and fast.
What am I doing incorrectly?