Clients & Profits X | Winter 2006

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TECH TALK

THE ROAD AHEAD

Speaking of business planning, we’re been doing a little ourselves. With the release of Clients & Profits X behind us (it was the fastest-selling upgrade in our 20-year history), we’ve got more on tap for 2006:

Clients & Profits X 10.1 — This upgrade will be a major event. It’ll be a “universal binary” for the Intel Mac and promises to finally bring Windows-like speeds to the Mac version of Clients & Profits. We’re planning new features (possibly sales commissions, vendor bidding, recurring billings, interactive scheduling) and over 25 new reports. Some versions will support the “free” community version of MySQL 5 and Microsoft’s SQL Server 2005 Express Edition. Availability: Summer 2006

My Clients & Profits! X — Our venerable add-on web server will see a complete rewrite this spring. The user interface has been refreshed with a new C&P ASAP-like look-and-feel that’s both easier to read and much faster to load. This free upgrade, which requires Clients & Profits X,will also be Mac OS X native. Availability: Spring 2006

Clients & Profits ASAP 2.0 — Our 100% web-based studio manager just had its first anniversary. Big changes are in store for 2006 based on feedback from our users, including : the ability to print simple purchase orders; fully customizable task table, status table, and job type/spec sheets; automatic job e-mail notification; a time card stopwatch; and, enhanced billing. The new upgrade will be released in April in celebration of our 20th anniversary — and at a special rate of only $20 per month for a full year!

Clients & Profits 5.x — Since the new Intel Macs no longer support “classic” apps, it’s unlikely that we’ll release another C&P Classic 5.x, C&P Pro 5.x, C&P SQL 5.x or Job Tracker 5.x update. However, product support will be provided indefinitely to support subscribers.

By Chris Lawrence

Changes big and small happen daily in the computer world, and it’s no small challenge to keep up. Here’s a rundown of the latest IT trends that affect Clients & Profits:

• Intel Macs At January’s MacWorld Expo, Apple announced a titanic shift: the first Macs based on an Intel processor. These new Macs look and feel like the old Macs, but have the guts of a Windows-based PC

Apple expects the new Intel Macs to be 3-4x faster. But even if those expectations are overstated (and, like gas mileage, probably are), Clients & Profits stands to run much faster on the new computers.

But before you replace your old Macs with new ones, be aware that the Intel Macs don’t have a “classic” mode that runs OS 9. This means you cannot run old versions of Clients & Profits — you must upgrade to Clients & Profits X first.

• Mac OS X 10.4.4 (Tiger) Server This server update is a breakthrough — it finally solves a long-standing cross-platform incompatibility that kept multi-user databases from being shared concurrently. This means an Xserve can now be used as a Clients & Profits database server for both Mac and Windows users.

• MySQL 5.0 This new version of the legendary open-source database is more evolutionary, not revolutionary. It adds worthwhile high-end features found previously only in Microsoft SQL Server (e.g., stored procedures, triggers, etc.) and claims to be faster than MySQL 4.1. Requires Clients & Profits Pro X 10.1 (see right).

• Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Like MySQL 5.0, this upgrade is also evolutionary. Its best feature for Clients & Profits system managers is its integrated database management tools, which are a big improvement.
The free “Express Edition” is meant to squeeze MySQL’s increasing market share and should be ideal for small C&P databases (if you call 1gb small). Requires Clients & Profits SQL X 10.1 (see right).

• Windows Vista The early test version of this long-awaited, security-focused upgrade to Microsoft Windows seems to run Clients & Profits fine. We can’t see much direct benefit for Clients & Profits, but anything that makes Windows less virus-prone is a plus.

Chris Lawrence is Clients & Profits' CIO.