ACT! 5.0.4

Rating:
Summary: I Love this Software
Review: I bought my copy of ACT two weeks ago and although it's not cheap, I think it's worth every penny. I decided to buy it because I wanted a tool to help organize a job search. In today's market I'm expecting to have to contact lots of employment agencies, talk to everyone I know to find out if they know someone who's hiring, get the names of all the local companies that employ people in my line of work, and so on. A pencil and notebook would not cut it for this, so I needed a database.
ACT makes this process very efficient. From within a contact record, I can instantly hyperlink to the contact's Website, send the contact an email, look at a address location on a map (MapQuest data is automatically brought in), get driving directions, remind myself of which resume I sent them, and see all email exchanges and any notes I made about the contact.
I've organized my contacts into groups so, for example, I can run through all records in my Employment Agencies group once a week and quickly check their Web sites for new openings. I have another group for job Web sites, another for personal contacts, and another for organizations and societies.
I called Tech Support once because the Web hyperlinks didn't open my browser automatically. Their support was good and they solved the problem.
If you need to organize your contacts and make the best use of your time, I definitely recommend ACT. And by the way -- I'm a writer and have no affiliation with the ACT company.

Rating:
Summary: It gets the job done, but YOU have to be flexible
Review: I've been using Act! since version 2.0 (yes the windows 3.1 version)and the software is managing a 4700 contact database right now. The program seems to do everything I need it to do, and I cannot think of anything on my immediate wish list. However, there are issues with the reliability of the sync feature when maintaining a database at home and work. Packages must be carefully applied or you may risk losing some data. Also it is not possible to sync two main computers and a Palm. This means my Palm is a "read only" device. I cannot check off anything and have it transfer to the computer, making my Palm a glorified "little black book"

There are other little quirks with the word processor. It does not like printing envelopes on my HP deskjet. The address always end up on the wrong side of the paper. None of the patches have ever fixed the problem. (Oddly enough even numbered versions 2.08 and 4.0 worked fine). Printing and customizing labels is also time consuming, so much so, that I simply clip and paste into MS Word to do this function along with my envelopes.

My biggest concern is with technical support. Simply put, it is non-existant beyond 30 days. After that, phone support is charged on a per call basis. There is no e-mail support, only a knowledge base, and a user moderated forum. Posting questions here is "hit or miss". To be frank, I wouldn't have moved to Act 2000 if the support for 4.0 hadn't disappeared when they changed from Symantec to Interact Corp. Both of my Act databases on my home computer and work computer are now showing (two different) problems with the Internet mail that I cannot resolve without removing and reinstalling the whole program.

With all these problems, why don't I move to another program? I guess cause it still works for the core things I need it to do. Sometimes you just need to be creative in finding "work arounds" for problems.

Rating:
Summary: It gets the job done, but YOU have to be flexible
Review: I've been using Act! since version 2.0 (yes the windows 3.1 version)and the software is managing a 4700 contact database right now. The program seems to do everything I need it to do, and I cannot think of anything on my immediate wish list. However, there are issues with the reliability of the sync feature when maintaining a database at home and work. Packages must be carefully applied or you may risk losing some data. Also it is not possible to sync two main computers and a Palm. This means my Palm is a "read only" device. I cannot check off anything and have it transfer to the computer, making my Palm a glorified "little black book"

There are other little quirks with the word processor. It does not like printing envelopes on my HP deskjet. The address always end up on the wrong side of the paper. None of the patches have ever fixed the problem. (Oddly enough even numbered versions 2.08 and 4.0 worked fine). Printing and customizing labels is also time consuming, so much so, that I simply clip and paste into MS Word to do this function along with my envelopes.

My biggest concern is with technical support. Simply put, it is non-existant beyond 30 days. After that, phone support is charged on a per call basis. There is no e-mail support, only a knowledge base, and a user moderated forum. Posting questions here is "hit or miss". To be frank, I wouldn't have moved to Act 2000 if the support for 4.0 hadn't disappeared when they changed from Symantec to Interact Corp. Both of my Act databases on my home computer and work computer are now showing (two different) problems with the Internet mail that I cannot resolve without removing and reinstalling the whole program.

With all these problems, why don't I move to another program? I guess cause it still works for the core things I need it to do. Sometimes you just need to be creative in finding "work arounds" for problems.

Rating:
Summary: Any software that has its own community of consultants...
Review: If you thought Adobe Illustrator has too many bells and whistles, you haven't tried ACT! So many seemingly reasonable people raved about how great it is that I invested the ..., and now find it to be unpenetrable. And I'm no Luddite: I'm a software product manager from DBMS days. Any product that isn't intuitive is poorly designed. Sure, you can turn anything that's painfully learned into a cult, but managing one's contacts should be no more than a tedious chore -- not a religion complete with mysteries, mantras, revelations, stigmata... and its own set of anointed priests, A.K.A. consultants!

Rating:
Summary: Any software that has its own community of consultants...
Review: If you thought Adobe Illustrator has too many bells and whistles, you haven't tried ACT! So many seemingly reasonable people raved about how great it is that I invested the ..., and now find it to be unpenetrable. And I'm no Luddite: I'm a software product manager from DBMS days. Any product that isn't intuitive is poorly designed. Sure, you can turn anything that's painfully learned into a cult, but managing one's contacts should be no more than a tedious chore -- not a religion complete with mysteries, mantras, revelations, stigmata... and its own set of anointed priests, A.K.A. consultants!

Rating:
Summary: Poor Documentation
Review: This is my first time using Act! and I am pretty dissapointed. The program is probably pretty powerful, but I can't get to that point yet with the documentation provided.

They could learn a thing or two from Peachtree. Not that Peachtree is a contact manager, but if you wonder "How do I pay a bill with a credit card card?", you can bet Peachtree doesn't just say "Do this from the bill paying area" like Act!'s help would. It would litterally walk you through the steps of setting up the account and even provide examples.

Act! doesn't even manage to describe all it's own fields neverless do a good job of setting up your own.

So if you buy this program, add an Act! for Dummies or similar book to your shopping cart also.