bruceh@mentor.com (Bruce Holm) (01/17/90)
I called Monogram the other day to find out when D&$ v5.0 will be out
and what new features it will have, etc. The man I talked to had a
real defensive complex. He stated that 5.0 was NOT out yet, that it
would be out by the end of the 1st quarter.
When I asked what the upgrade fee would be, he said he didn't know.
When I mentioned that the mailorder places already had the product
listed in their ads for $80, he stated that they had received ALOT
of hate mail, hate phone calls, etc from customers who had ordered
from these mailorder places and been told the product was not out
yet. I asked what happens if the product actually costs more, who
pays the difference. He quickly stated that the mailorder places
"eat" the difference in cost. He also added in a nasty tone that
he personally hoped that the price was doubled so that the cost to
mailorder houses would be very high. I assumed his nasty attitude
was due to all the hate mail/phone calls he and others had received.
I asked how the mailorder places got word of the 5.0 version and he
said he didn't know, that somehow they got wind of it and placed ads
for it in anticipation of the announcement.
I asked if he had a list of the new features that 5.0 would have and
he said he didn't know...that he had not been told yet. Only the
R & D group knew. I asked to talk to them and he said they were at
a different location (another part of the state) and that he didn't
know the phone number.
So there you go, a nasty customer service man making a very poor
impression to me (I was polite to him and said nothing to him that
should make him upset) and who knew nothing about D&$ 5.0.
If you have heard otherwise, or have had similar experiences let
the rest of us hear about it. If you know the 5.0 feature set,
let us know.
If you were wanting to order v5.0 from mailorder houses, DON'T
because it is not released yet.
--Bruce
--
** These are my opinions, & not necessarily those of Mentor Graphics Corp. **
Bruce Holm, Design/Analysis Div. / (503) 626-7000
Mentor Graphics Corp. / USENET: bruceh@pdx.MENTOR.COM
Beaverton, OR 97005-7191 / UUCP: ...!{sequent,tessi,apollo}!mntgfx!bruceh emuroga@m.cs.uiuc.edu (01/18/90)
Which is considered the best personal finance management program on the mac? Is the Andrew Tobias program the best? Dollars and Sense? Eisuke Muroga Department of Computer Science | 1304 W. Springfield Ave. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | Urbana, IL 61801 ARPA emuroga@m.cs.uiuc.edu CSNET emuroga@uiuc.csnet USENET uiucdcs!uiucdcsm!emuroga BITNET emuroga%m.cs.uiuc.edu@uiucvmd.bitnet
wiseman@tellab5.TELLABS.COM (Jeff Wiseman) (01/19/90)
In article <8400226@m.cs.uiuc.edu> emuroga@m.cs.uiuc.edu writes: > > Which is considered the best personal finance management program on >the mac? Is the Andrew Tobias program the best? Dollars and Sense? > The answer to this question is really based on a persons needs. I have a friend who only wnat to track where everything went. He doesn't want any real complicated programs so he uses Quicken. My personal preference is Dollars and $ense. I do not need all of the fancy estate planning and futures capabilities of MYM. Also, I am a real interface freak :-). MYM does not use the Mac feel very well IMHO. D&S does. D&S's transaction entry is totally orthogonal. (ie a transaction of a check being written and dispersed to a "groceries" expense account acan be entered in the asset account for the check and dispersed to the expense account, or it could be entered in the expense account and dispersed to the asset). D&S has a very good reporting mechanism in terms of its flexability. If you want to see something, you usually can. The dark side is, if you do unusual things that you SHOULD be able to do (eg dispers two peices of a transaction into the same expenses account with two different flags and then try to re-edit the transaction from within the expense account itself), you will accasionally find bugs prohibiting you. One other program to consider is MacMoney. Many people also seem to like it. From everything that I have seen and heard, You can not do quite as much with MacMoney (eg. its reporting mechanism lacks some flexability compared to D&S) but its makers (Survivor Software) appear to provide excellant service and technical support for their customers. You might want to track down the February 1989 issue of MacWorld. It has a comparison of finance packages that may give you more info. By the way, I have talked to several frustrated D&S users who have tried MacMoney because of its apparent better support and solidity and they all returned to D&S simply because of D&S's "better" interface and flexability IN SPITE of the service and bug problems. I am in the same boat and understand. I use D&S version 4.1c, the latest. Hope this helps! -- Jeff Wiseman: ....uunet!tellab5!wiseman OR wiseman@TELLABS.COM