chuq%plaid@Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) (01/23/87)
I just wanted to point people at what looks like a really good deal. In the most recent Mac magazines, the Forethought people have a special deal for owners of 'orphan' databases (Microsoft File, PFS:File, and a few others). If you send them the title page of the manual to your existing database, they'll send you FileMaker Plus and a set of conversion tools for a significantly reduced price (about $25 cheaper than you can get it at ComputerWare, so it's cheap!) Since I'm an owner of Microsoft File -- a program that Microsoft seems to have forgotten in the midst of Excel, Word, and the other major players -- I decided to go for it. Among other things, I found out that the mailing label option of File DOES NOTE WORK on a laserwriter. All of the fields will NOT scrunch down. Also, File does not support multiple records on a line, so printing mailing labels three up (the standard for LW/Copier labels) is impossible. I, of course, found this out the hard way when, after converting OtherRealms from an ImageWriter to LaserWriter fairly painlessly, tried to print the labels to mail it out to subscribers. So much for advance planning... But anyway, I got it in today. The manual is impressive. The functionality looks impressive -- but I'm just starting to play with it. It looks very solid and professionally done. All of the Mac magazines have given it high marks in reviews, and they look justified. I would say that the manual is the best piece of documentation I've seen with a Mac software product, bar none -- from a production side and (at least initially) from a content side. The index is 18 pages long, always a good sign. The manual is built so it can be dropped from an airplane and still be usable (unlike many of the manuals, especially RSG3.0, that look like they're due to fall apart in two months of use). It comes with four disks. One is a System disk, one a program disk, one a template disk, and the orphan conversion package. The program is NOT copy protected, huzzah! IN the manual is a site license and bulk volume-discount purchase agreement. Huzzah! There are two manuals, one for the program and one for the templates. The conversion utilities look a little primitive, but my guess is that they'll copy across most normal databases fine -- you'll definitely want to restructure them to take advantage of the new program, but this should save you the data entry problems. It comes with 10 sets of pre-defined templates/sample programs: Expense Reports, Fixed Assets, Mail List (including list, mailing labels to half a dozen different formats including both IW and LW, and telephone list), membership template (including postcard printing), Phone messages, business proposal, Purchase order, repair order, rolodex (including printing on rolodex cards for the IW) and sales order/invoice. As a side comment, there is an on-line help subsystem. It is written as an application in Filemaker Plus -- an impressive show of the power and flexibility of the system. Filemaker looks to be a fully function database/data entry/form generator for the Mac. it supports mail-merge functions, both with itself and with Word. It supports sorting, selecting, flexibile reporting setups (if you've ever tried to use the File 'reports' you'll be happy to hear this) summaries and sub-summaries, all sorts of neat toys. All this for about $130 on the orphan package or $160 at ComputerWare. It looks like a helluva deal to me. As I find more out, I'll let you know. chuq Chuq Von Rospach chuq@sun.COM It's only a model...