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(More customer reviews)Dear Lord! I've been an ACT! user for over 11 years, coming up through Windows 3.X and even administering a 7-user (13,000+ contact)ACT! network. Those of us who are old hands at ACT! know that the program can be a wonderful slave and a terrible master. Such is the case with lots of crucial technology.
My last upgrade was to 2005. That one went off without a hitch. Since I decided to register that time, I've been getting 'Upgrade to 2007' emails from Sage for about 9 months. I normally will ignore these solicitations, but the 'integration with Outlook' feature caught my eye. I went ahead and downloaded the program (giant 250+mb file)last Monday.
After backing up my ACT! data to 3 separate locations, I proceeded with my install. Virus software 'off', closed all non-essential programs, etc. This thing was a mess from the get-go. After failing to start the install process several times, I called support, and after about 55 minutes of hold time, was handed off to a nice woman named Muralidharan who spent the next THREE HOURS on the line with me deleting individual items from the registry, downloading patches from Microsoft, etc. At the end of that ordeal, we had a successful install, meaning the program would run.
Next up was converting my database. That actually went smoothly, just humming along and proclaimimg success at the end. When I opened said database, I was pleased to see my contacts intact and even displayed in the template I had customized. Excited, I went to check my calendar, since that's the main screen I use. No calendar items. Check to see if the filters are out of whack-nope. Items show on the task list, and future to-dos, calls, and meetings show under each individual contact's 'activities' tab, but there was no way in Hades I could get it to show up on the Calendar. Regarding the Outlook functionality-it's not there if you use Word as your Outlook email editor. If you don't use Word, it's still a clunky, lame interface that requires a special ACT! address book in Outlook, etc.
Back to tech support. a 45 minute wait connected me to a very nice person who listened to my woes and promptly disconnected me. The next person I spoke with, after a nearly 1 hour hold (nice New-Age hold muzak, btw), was equally as friendly but apparently suffered fronm the same phone problems as the prior tech, since he disconnected while putting me on hold.
Fast forward to today. I fired up the evil box for a day in the office, hit the ACT! launch button, and watched it load significantly faster than I had remembered. Heartened, I waited for the activities to roll over. I can tell you now-I think I'd still be waiting for that rollover if I hadn't killed the process. I watched an hourglass for about ten minutes before doing a cold boot and retrying. Same result. Last straw.
I called ACT! and requested a refund. After a (surprise!)30 minute wait, I was connected with a gentleman who credited me back for my full purchase price. For the record, everyone I've dealt with at Sage has been helpful and friendly. One person I spoke with (likely NOT on a recorded line!) even lamented that the product may have been brought to market 'prematurely'.
Bottom line: There's no compelling reason to 'upgrade', and many, many reasons not to.
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ACT! by Sage 2007 (9.0) is the #1 selling contact and customer manager that helps you make contact, build relationships, and get results. ACT! enables you to instantly access key contact and customer information, manage and prioritize activities, and track all contact-related communications so you can grow productive business relationships. Renowned for its ease of use, ACT! offers robust integration with the tools you use everyday, such as Microsoft Office*, Lotus Notes*, accounting products, and handheld devices. Use mail merge and e-mail to deliver marketing campaigns, forecast and track customer opportunities, and generate reports for a complete view of customer interactions. *(See www.act.com/2007systreq for details.)
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