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From: willcox@urbana.mcd.mot.com (David A Willcox)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps
Subject: Re: Dollars & Sense 4.x Archives - What good are they ?
Message-ID: <1470@urbana.mcd.mot.com>
Date: 14 Jan 91 15:29:22 GMT
References: <44440@mips.mips.COM> <4936@tellab5.tellabs.com> <20989@.la.locus.com> <5007@tellab5.tellabs.com>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Motorola Microcomputer Division, Urbana, IL
Lines: 38

My own two bits on Dollars and $ense...

(Having been out of town for a while, I just saw this thread.)

I agree with many of the comments about D&S 4.1c.  While it has some
bugs (the corrupted database resulting from using the same account for
funding and distribution being the most well known and nasty), they
usually aren't a problem, and you can get around them.  I am willing
to live with the problems, since otherwise the program is very good.

I bought an upgrade to 5.0 several months ago, soon after it came out. 
The new version fixes a number of the old problems, including the
"corrupted database" one.  There is some increased flexibility in the
reports, in that you can modify the width of columns, remove columns
altogether, and specify the size (and font?) for the report.  There
also is an iconic interface that lets you assign icons to frequently
used operations.  (You can make icons for entering checks into each of
your checking accounts, for example, rather than having to type the
account name into a dialog box each time.)  You also have more control over
the formatting of printed checks (though there is a major kludge if
you have to deal with several different check formats).

HOWEVER, I have not switched over to using 5.0, and will not before
there is another release.  The problem is that the database file grows
without bound; there is no way to recover unused space in it.  In
4.1c, if your file got too big, you could archive some transactions
and then do a "Save as".  The new saved file would have the unused
(archived) transactions compressed out.  This isn't true in 5.0.  My
database file under 5.0 was well over a megabyte, and I could see no
way to reduce it.

I reported this problem to the company in October.  They promised I
would get an upgrade when it was available.  So far, no word from them.

David A. Willcox		"Just say 'NO' to universal drug testing"
Motorola TSD - Urbana		UUCP: ...!uiucuxc!udc!willcox
1101 E. University Ave.		INET: willcox@urbana.mcd.mot.com
Urbana, IL 61801		FONE: 217-384-8534