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Product under review: ACT! 2006User experiences with ACT 2006 are not too encouraging, unfortunately, particularly for people upgrading from previous versions. By most accounts, ACT 2006 is considerably slower and less stable than its predecessors, with very little to offer. It offers mostly cosmetic changes, with synching functionality beefed up somewhat, unless you use a Treo 650, that is (in which case there is no synching). The new version seems to corrupt the registry, making it hard to uninstall (just to add insult to injury.) More extensive beta testing would have gone a long way to ironing out some of the issues and appeasing irate purchasers. In fairness, there are some folk who are very pleased with Act! 2006, but they seem to be largely new users and are very much in the minority. At the least, even with a relatively small database, you are going to require a souped-up PC to get some semblance of performance out of the new, resource-hungry ACT! This applies to those running on SQL Server, too. Outlook integration and searches are also inordinately slow. What is the point of the new XML and SQL data structures, then? Disappointing, especially coming from one of the CRM industry stalwarts. One expects better. Advice would be to wait until Sage release a 'Service Pack' for ACT! 2006, (as MS euphemistically calls their bug fixes), stay with your older version, or investigate the newer genre of exciting hosted/online CRM and Outlook-embedded CRM solutions for small businesses appearing on the scene. (Click on the NavBar on the left to see some of these options.) Again, these problems haven't been experienced by everybody - maybe you have the correct mix of h/w and s/w variables to satisfy your requirements. Try the free trial download of ACT! 2006, or you can watch their demo. Sage would do well though to take heed of what happened to PackRat (remember them), several years ago. They had to recall a dysfunctional release of their CRM product, which pretty much sounded the death knell for them. Copyright, SmallbizCRM, 2006. All rights reserved. Return to SmallBizCRM Homepage
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