What do most QB users do? I was a QB DOS V2.1 user up until a year ago, now I'm running 2006 PRO. Very disappointed with 2006. It seems to me the $20.00 discount they offer to upgrade is a big insult to me, I'm used to upgrade prices at 50% of new retail. I might just run this till I close shop and retire.
I did pay full price to go to 2006, seems the DOS version was a bit old. I don't think the Tech support guy I talked to was born when it came out, he was clueless. Thank You, Randy
If I were you that is exactly what I would do. Intuit did insult you. They treated you like the scum of the earth. Fight back, go back to DOS. Show them whose boss.
Welcome to the ng Randy. Though our self-proclaimed fanboy was rather tongue in cheek, I suspect the upgrade from dos was worth it. As to the annual upgrades, I can't speak for what "most" QB users do. Our company just upgraded from 2003 to 2006 (Premier Contractor edition). We probably wouldn't have, but for the fact that the 2003 version was 'sunset'.
I was happily surprised at a number of small improvements, but was horrified by the massive increase in file size. We still get the Intuit spam for Enterprise edition while logged in (file slow? try upgrading blah blah blah). The heavy handed sales/"upgrade" policies bother me, but for our money we have not found a better software solution.
I work for my money, it is not given to me. That old DOS version worked very well and does things 2007 does not do nearly as good IMO. By all means keep sending them your $200.00 each year.
"Massive increase in file size?" So what? 80Gig hard drives are being used as prizes in the bottom of Cracker Jack boxes. You can get the data storage equivalent of 200 or more floppies on a stick the size of pack of gum.
I agree on the file size my DOS data was 200K on the 2006 version my data is 23M. Same data, just very poorly stored. But because memory and HD space is so cheap programmers just don't give a damn about writing good code.
I just get all the QB credit card spam. I delete all the icons off my desktop but every patch from QB puts them back on.
Your going to have to do a lot better if you want to attain the status of troll on this newsgroup. Starting a thread comparing the file size between QB DOS V2.1 and QB 2006 will not cut it in todays troll business. We have been there and done that years ago. Franking its quite boring.
I like to think of myself as a "good programmer." Back in the early days of computing, programmers spent an inordinate amount of time trying to minimize RAM/disk requirments. It was required.
But this necessity had two downsides: 1) Often the technique simply lit a fuse for a later explosion (for example, assuming the year would consist of only two digits, as in the Y2K problem), and 2) The programming time it took (often substantial) to achieve these economies was unavailable for other tasks.
One expert testified before Congress on the supposed "monopoly problem" with Microsoft's Windows. He said his company had an airplane hanger full of printers. Every time a new printer hit the market, they had to buy one and spend hundreds of programming hours (sometimes) to tweak their software to work with the new model.
With Windows, all that went away.
His programmers are now free to concentrate on the application his company markets, rather than running faster to stay in the same place. Of course his users have to put up with the "bloat" associated with all the printer drivers in Windows, but, on balance, his users get a much better result.
No, your contention that "good programming practice" mandates concise and efficient anything is contrary to experience.
Bub, I'm surprised you let the troll get to you. While your answer is excellent, had I choose to respond, I would have simply stated that, I have 3 pictures of my dog licking his balls stored on my hard drive that take up more space than his QB 2006 data file.
When I first started out in the computer consulting field I used to design applications in DBase II. Back then in the very early days, they did not have report writers ,so out-put routines had to be hard coded. Today with applications like Crystal Reports, report writing is so much simplier and faster. The benefits far outweigh the extra space required for the Crystal runtime engine that needs to be installed on each users workstation. Disc space is cheap, I am not.
Great! I anticipate purchasing a new Dell next year and will have it congifured with 2 terabyes of storage. I'm pleased as punch knowing I can squeeze a few megabyes out of my QB file.
...the main benefit for what I outlined above, is for when you're running up against a storage limit (i.e.. you have a smaller USB thumbdrive, 100MB zip disks, or a tiny online backup storage amount) and the size of your file starts running up against that limit. Eventually you'll need to figure out a better backup solution, granted, but the above should be able to get you by in a pinch.
There are very few real programmers left most "programmers" now use a software program to create their software program. My point is the new cut and paste together modules makes for a bloated and inefficient program.
It seems if you have nothing good to say about quickbooks you are not welcome here.
My thanks to the one poster who actually gave me usefull info to reduce my data file size. I'll try it.
4 gig USB key drives sell for $99.00. So do 160 plus gig external drives. What about CD and DVD backup? What about your ipod, they hold 4, 8 30 or 80 gigs depending on the model you own. We are approching 2007, storage for QB files should not be a problem.
Balls. There are 8,467,888 people employed as "programmers" (or a variant, such as "system analyst") in the U.S. Of these, 246,555 use program generators routinely; another 177,000 admit to have using program generators at least once in their career.
That's generally true - especially when criticism is not well-founded.
I suppose "helpful information" is in the eye of the beholder.
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