Altivar 71 VSD experience

Guys, we are soon to commit to the Schnieder Altivar 71 range of variable frequency drives. Of course the sales team reckon its heaven on a stick, I am hoping some of you guys can give me an unbiased appraisal. It depends heavily (totally) on ethernet comms for control, how solid is ethernet comms? no comms (I suspect a blip may even put the drives in fault) will shut the factory down. Am I worrying about nothing? Your thoughts please.
I hate being on the cutting edge of technology.

Regards
Steve D

I would suggest to wait and see.

ATV58 was C R A P.
ATV71 is new promise,How good? I canot tell.Schnieder have good electromechanic stuff with electronic stuff. I have list of failures/ill products over the yrars.
My suggestion "shave on the others beard.

Check the response speed of the new Altivars. At least up to today, the Square D drives have generally been regarded as a generation behind the state of the art and extremely slow. On the other hand, they seem to be stable and very reliable.

In my view, the single biggest issue is how good the local support is. If you've got Sq D people that are knowledgeable and available, its probably a good choice--otherwise not.

Depends a lot on what they are connecting to with the ethernet, remember ethernet is not ethernet. And you are right, when have you ever heard a salesman say his gear was no good.
Regards Alan Case

we are using plenty of telemechanique altivars for more years and i don't remember that any of them was anytime! broken ... but we using almost only lower models like ATV31 ATV28, simply target device matters ... i was thinking about some kind of communication instead of analogue driving too ... so ... tomorrow i have a meeting with some guy from schneider and maybe i'll get more info from him

Thanks for the input guys, I shall struggle on in the hope that all new equipment is good equipment.