Act By Sage 2010 [Old Version]

by Sage

Product Features

• The #1 selling contact and customer management solution for over 20 years
• Easily access a complete, integrated view of your contact relationships
• integrates with everyday solutions such as Microsoft Office

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.6 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B002IYLIC0
• Item model number: ACTS2010RT
• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 2, 2004
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #456 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #6 in Software > Business & Office > Database

Product Description

ACT! by Sage 2010 helps individuals organize the details of customer relationships in one place for a complete view of the people they do business with. Improve marketing effectiveness to attract new customers and get more from existing relationships. And, take action on qualified sales leads with total visibility into the pipeline. Continue working with business solutions like Microsoft® Outlook®, Word, Excel®, and Lotus Notes® because they integrate with ACT!. Be more productive right away since ACT! is easy to learn and use.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

131 of 137 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars ACT! 2010 may finally get it right, January 29, 2010

By 

Bob Lewis "bobzt" (Farmingdale, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Act By Sage 2010 [Old Version] (DVD-ROM)

I would like to tell you about my experiences with ACT! but also provide some additional information about this program since there seems to be a lot of MIS-Information flying around. I do not work for this company and am not affiliated with Sage in any way. I am just a user. I have written database applications in the past.

I have been an ACT! 3.0 and then ACT! 6.0 version(s) user for a number of years. When I tried to upgrade to ACT!2006 there were some problems. I decided not to upgrade and wait until the problems were resolved. I recently purchased ACT! 2010 and am fairly happy with it.

These types of programs like ACT! are database applications. They are written using a database engine that lies beneath the surface of the part the user sees. This engine could be MS Access, MS FoxPro, R:BASE or some other program. Up until about 2004, ACT! was based on a MS FoxPro engine. In this situation, the database and the underlining engine are essentially one program. In about 2005, the company switched to using MS SQL server. In this situation, the application the user sees and the database engine are separate programs. The user's application (the part you see) is written using what's known as a "front end" program like MS Visual Basic, MS Access or maybe MS Visual C. (MS = Microsoft). The reason for the separation of the two sides of the program, is to allow the engine and the user's data to reside on a server somewhere other than the users computer. This way, several users can conveniently access the data at the same time. MS SQL server is a tricky program to talk to and it takes some time to get this right. This probably explains some of the problems with earlier versions.

Having two separate programs, however, slows things down a bit. There will be a slight delay compared to a single database application. This is similar to when you look up books on Amazon.com. Sometimes it does not respond right away. Usually though, the network traffic will be much less at your location than on the internet.

That all being said, ACT! 2010 runs pretty good, but you need to be aware of some things in order to get good results. I am using it on my own computer, not on a server, and have Windows XP, SP4.

1) The CPU in your computer should be fairly recent. Like at least 2.0 GHz for a desktop.

1) Because you are loading up two programs at the same time, you need more memory. I originally had 1 GB in my laptop and the ACT! program did seem a little slow. I upgraded to 4 GB (3GB usable) and there was a noticeable improvement in the response time. Like 25% better. Memory is cheap right now.

2) I ran Sages Hotfix#4 and that seemed to help a little too. Available on ACT! website.

3) Running the Windows defrag utility may help if you haven't done this lately. Having a fast Hard Drive is good - 7200RPM.

4) Because I have wide screen, I was using oversize fonts (120 dpi instead of 96 dpi). The program did not like this and ran "funny". I had to reset my video card back to the standard 96 dpi. When I did, the results were much better.

5) Like many other software, ACT!2010 has the ability to run 3rd party plug-ins or add-ins. My version came with a trial version of a marketing program (one of the tabs). I found that this slowed things down some, especially at boot up. I deleted it using some instructions I found on the user community forum. It was simple to do and it helped.

Since I can write database applications myself, I considered preparing one for my own use. This is a large undertaking for anything similar to ACT's feature set so I decided to just buy one. I looked at probably 30 programs. Commercial ones, free, shareware, trial copies and so on. I found that compared to the others, ACT! is especially well designed and laid out and is really the best program of its kind. When combined with Outlook, you really have a powerful setup for managing your daily activities.

Setting up ACT! to run really smooth make take a little more than some other stand alone programs, because of the two part database I mentioned earlier. For this reason, you might want to contact technical support to help you if you have tried my suggestions and the program is still not running right. If you are not technical, there are many consultants available who know this program well.

As far as technical support goes, when I had the problem with my font size, I was baffled about it because it didn't show up with any of the other programs I use. I called the Tech support line and spoke to someone there who assessed my problem and instructed me on how to solve it. I did not say anything about my engineering background so as to see what level of people they had answering the phones. I was pleasantly surprised at the high quality of the tech support people. They know their stuff very well.

All in all, I would recommend this program highly to users who have the appropriate hardware to run it fast and who will spend a little time (or money in the case of a consultant or extra tech support) to set it up properly. The program will repay you with lots of sales leads and help you manage your day better.

One final comment. When upgrading from earlier versions, this is not a plug and play process. You need to carefully think about doing this, review the on-line notes, manuals and so on. There is a users forum with helpful info. ***BACK UP*** your database before proceeding with any upgrades, including backing up the Outlook data if you are going to work the programs together.

106 of 120 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Worst Act! ever, October 15, 2009

By 

Gary M. Sheppard (Granbury, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Act By Sage 2010 [Old Version] (DVD-ROM)

I recently purchased the new ACT! 2010 edition with high hopes that this would be a great new upgrade from previous editions. I have been an early adopter of ACT, having first used the product in 1987 and have used subsequent versions since. I stopped using ACT when they wouldn't run on Vista when Vista first came out. At the time, I was surprised that a company like Sage would not have properly planned for the launch of Vista to at least have a product that would work with it.

Fast forward to now and my latest experience with ACT! 2010. What a disaster! At first, the downloaded version seemed to install correctly. But then I wanted to link my Outlook database with ACT and that didn't work properly. Simple fields like "State" and "ZIP" were incorrectly matched so that "State" showed up under the "City" field in ACT and "ZIP" showed up in the "State" field.
Then another problem happened. I opened up my Outlook 2007 program and found a major fault. In short, Outlook was no longer able to send emails out, but I could still receive incoming mail. Somehow, ACT was forcing you to send emails within ACT and not through Outlook directly. I then re-started my computer hoping that the problem of not being able to send within Outlook would be resolved, but when I tried to open up Outlook again, it had become completely corrupted and was asking me to set up Outlook as if I was using it for the first time!

I immediately called ACT tech support and the solution they suggested was to uninstall Outlook and reinstall it. In other words, the solution was to wipe out every email I had ever sent or received and start over again. I have now spent the past several days reloading backed up versions of Outlook and trying to delete every instance of ACT 2010 on my computer.

This new ACT product does not have its act together and if you use Outlook at all, then ACT 2010 will become your living nightmare. My recommendation is to stay far, far away from ACT 2010 and avoid the aggravation and hassle of having to rebuild your Outlook files.

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Act! Works Well. Works as advertized., January 30, 2010

By 

Clam80 "Clam80" (New York) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Act By Sage 2010 [Old Version] (DVD-ROM)

I used Act! Version 1 over 20 years ago and it worked well. Switched to Goldmine version 4.0 and then version 5.7 about 10 years ago hoping it would have better synchronization with other users, and because it easily imported Act Databases. Became disatisfied with difficulty in customizing Goldmine. Then Goldmine abandoned support for single users. Stayed with Goldmine longer than I wanted because it was difficult to export 10 years of client data to another program because of Goldmine's complicated structure of its data tables. Finally ACT! made available Migrate Admin 2010, a program that made it easy to export all Goldmine data into Act!2010. The migration program cost a steep $300, but the hours of time and data it saved was worth it for a once in a decade data conversion. The migration worked well. I am not an IT person but I am a "hands on" user. ACT! 2010 works well. It is easily customizable. It requires more RAM memory than Goldmine to work well. It works fine on my desktop with 4GB of RAM. I had to upgrade my laptop to its max of 2 GB of RAM. I was skeptical about ACT!'s claim to synchronize with Outlook, but it really does work well. I had three occassions in the first 30 days of use to call Act! tech support due to problems that turned out to be related to my system,not the ACT! program. The Act! tech support was manned by foreign sounding voices but it was excellent. Quick, competent, courteous, decisve and complete. Could not ask for more from a tech support. I highly reccommend ACT! 2010 for ease of use, ease of customization and Outlook synchroniztion.