Customer Reviews

ACT! 2005 [Old Version]

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(101)

 

 

The new version of ACT! 2005 is a significant disappointment. It should be avoided. The new program removes a number of attractive features that existed in ACT! 6.0, crashes constantly, and is no longer user friendly.

For example, in 6.0 if one wished to add a contact to a number of groups and subgroups, the steps were relatively simple and easy to complete. The contact menu item would be designated. In the drop down menu, the group membership feature would be selected. A list of groups and sub-groups would appear. The user would then click those groups to be added and/or deleted, click okay, and be brought back to the contact screen.

In the new version, 7.0, it is no longer possible to follow this series of steps. Now one clicks on an item called add contact to group. A partial listing of groups is shown. Another item must be selected to get the full list of groups and subgroups. Only one selection can be made and no deletions can be performed at this point. Then a group screen appears. This must be discarded to get back to the contact screen and then the process must be repeated for each additional group add wanted. What took three easy steps now may take 12 to 15.

The fact that so many steps are demanded eats up available memory. Thus, after performing a number of actions the program will crash. If one works on it long enough setting up desired functions the program will constantly freeze and crash. Memory usage which was poor in version 6.0 is now a disaster. It is impossible to believe that this program was ever beta tested.

This is only one of many examples of program changes that make this ACT! 7.0 more difficult. For example, one can no longer edit contacts in the contact list screen. On a simple lookup the program keeps adding unwanted screens requiring more keystrokes and stimulating more crashes

Do not expect help from either of the manuals the company publishes. They do not even treat with any of the issues mentioned here. Also be aware if you spend a few hundred bucks to buy the access to technicians, you will wait 45 to 60 minutes to reach one. Then the technician will indicate that the program was changed to eliminate key functions.

If you purchase the Standard version you cannot even find out how many contacts are in a group. Sending e-mails has become more complex.

Get the picture. This program is self destructing and charging customers hundreds of dollars to do so. Buy it if you are a dyed in the wool masochist

Another reviewer speaks of taking a minute & a half to load on an old machine. My 2+Gig with 500Mb RAM is also sloooow to load. I was upgrading (?) from v5, which is no great shakes, either, but I stuck with it because the Goldmine reviews were underwhelming. Some of the features that didn't work at all in V5 now work, but not properly (such as field names and sub-groups). On the other hand, importing from DB5 required that I use V5 then V7. V7 simply refused to import the data. That is as far as I have had time to push to now. Hope not too many more traps await me. Especially hope the crashings do not come.

Absent a major change of heart by management, I cannot imagine ever buying another edition of ACT! It is pretty good software for 1989. Trouble is, this isn't 1989. I recommend you pass on this ?upgrade? It is slow, remains sloppy to use, and the customizing screens tend to slip away before you are done making the feeble changes that are allowed. Sigh!

I downloaded this the day it came out. I use the previous version 6.03 approximately 5 hours a day. I was hoping that the two features I wanted most (tracking of incoming email & searchable email)were included in this upgrade. Well the email is now searchable but there is no recognition of incoming emails other than that they show up in your inbox. If you desire a product that tracks your (email) communications with others and allows you to simply look at a 'contact' and see the activity history then look elsewhere. You will have to MANUALLY ATTACH EACH INCOMING EMAIL TO ITS CONTACT. Like my 4 year old who speaks but does not listen so to does ACT 2005.

Also, ACT! 2005 takes about 20 seconds just to start up compared to <1 second for ACT! 6.03 (1.4GHz, 768Mb Centrino). I had to re-install the previous version after un-installing ACT 2005.

Buy the CD or download the product and try preferably on a spare computer, not your primary. Too, ignore the conflicting information about downloads not being returnable, they are and return it within 30 days if not satisfied.

I've been using ACT for years and was anxious to see an upgrade to ACT 2005. Installation was easy, it converted my old act database to the new format. But as I started using it, I realized that there were more features missing from the previous version than features added that I would use. The dialer is gone. There is no way to dial a contact's phone number from the application unless you want to buy a $49 add-on from a third party. And the add-on doesn't automatically record history of the phone call in the notes or history section. The second disappointment was the email part of the program. The performance hasn't improved and the .html templates have disappeared. The only email format is now .tpl. The same problems with using Outlook or Eudora that were in the 6.0 version are still here.
Performance is also slower than the previous version. On a 2.4 Ghz. computer with 640 MB of RAM it seems to take forever to launch and has a generally sluggish feeling.
On the positive side, you can attach files to a note and the group feature has more subgroups of groups. The Opportunities also have a tab and list from the contact screen. But for everyday features that are used on a constant basis, like dialing and email, it is lacking.
Fortunately, the upgrade has a 30 day guarantee. I plan to send it back.

As an avid Act! user, I was very excited to move to ACT!2005, I plunked down my credit card and got it shipped to me on release day.

As a person who makes a living installing and tuning software I was amazed this thing got out of development. First, it runs on personal MSSQL Server, which has to be installed, so there is another service/headache to manage and maintain--but at least the Microsoft stuff seemed to install and run ok. The problem was ACT!2005. The dot.net look is nice, but the e-mail does not work for any of my POP server accounts. So I tried to integrate it with Outlook, that did not work either. Then, intermitently, the database would not open. Do not even try to synchronize...it does not work at worst, and requires a PhD in networking and databases, at best. Also, all the addins were crashing my MS Office products--blue screened me.

This is the worst software release I have seen in quite a while...do not know how anyone would send this stuff out to customers, unless they did want to do business with them in the future. Must be an "offshore" job.

I sent this thing back and got my money refunded.

I will save you the time, trouble, and money--wait until it all works. Which may be a while as reviews of this product (at other locations around the net as well) are uniformly disappointing.

ACT! may have lost me on this one, my business is growing and now I have to consider Goldmine and Microsoft...

I've used ACT 2000 with good results, and assumed (foolish me) that the 2005 version would be, oh I don't know, 5 years better. I installed it on my new Dell Dimension 4600 and waited for it to wow me. And waited. And waited. Slow is an understatement. I was sure it was something I'd done wrong, because no one could possibly ship a such a poorly designed program. "Tech support" is nonexistent--absurd wait times, no call backs as promised and no email response, sheer lunacy when introducing a significantly new product. Bottom line, this is a B-school textbook case of a company trying their darndest to commit product suicide. Scary.

I had been a long time user of ACT since '99. Back when it was a Symantic product. I Bought Act! 2000 and had used it up until a few weeks ago. It did everything I needed it to, so I never needed to upgrade. That is until we upgraded to MS Office 2003 and the word processor stopped working with the mail merge.
I wish I had read these reviews before I bought ACT! 8. It took a month for them to ship it to me. It took 3 days & numerous tries to install it, and it still doesn't run right.
It's so slow It's barely usable.
Want to find a contact? please wait 30 seconds
Want to write a letter? another 30 seconds.
Oh and I'm running a brand new Dell laptop, with lots of power.
No, this program is garbage. Complete waste of money.

I've never worked with a piece of software this faulty and unusable. The past 7 months have been tortuous. Following are some of the problems I've had. Have you all had them as well?

1) More than 2-hour import time for less than 10,000 records. I was told today that 10,000 records was a lot. I'm sorry, but I can import ONE-HUNDRED thousand records in a half dozen other .NET database programs in seconds; a minute at most. The fact that this is a underdeveloped product is why the import is slow -not the size of the import file.

1b) Customized layouts are very dangerous to work with if you import data a lot. Duplicate checking does not work properly. Here's why: Did you know that, even if you set the only duplicate checking parameter for one field (other than Contact), the program still checks the Contact field by default for duplicates -even if it's not a part of your layout?!?!?!??? I couldn't believe it when I was told this. ACT! should not allow me to do duplicate checking at ALL if its default is set to Contact! Support members have agreed with me on this one. This issue has cost me a TON of time, and our company a TON of money. I had created a custom layout, deleting many of the default fields and creating a unique primary key field that is imported from a .CSV file. Why would you want to scan for duplicates by a contact name??? It's common practice to use numbers for primary keys, not names. So, if I know that many of the Contact fields are empty in my source .CSV database, duh!, I'm going to use another field, such as the unique field from my .CSV import. But wait! I was told that having empty Contact fields was also a reason for the long import time. So I wrote a program that created unique names for all the empty fields: NO CHANGE IN IMPORT TIME. Then support reverted back to the 'it's a large import,' and promptly blew me off.

2) If you have empty Contact fields, forget using the default report templates. They simply do not work. And if you spend the time like I did to create custom templates, the alignment of the printed version is different from the layout designer version. Yet another part of the program that doesn't work.

3) Phone support. If you have 30-45 minutes, then you might find an operator. (Wonder why they're so busy?) The support, when you finally do reach them, is horrible. They obviously do not understand the breadth of the mishaps of the programs. Other support arenas that I use (and we paid extra for) can never offer solutions that actually WORK. I have always found my own work-arounds through trial and error; not once has an ACT! representative found one for me -and that's not an exagerration.

4) Endless synchronization problems over VPN. I get a call from at least one remote user per week who tells me that he/she cannot synchronize. Databases become corrupt and need rebuilt and redelivered. I can list at least 3 different error messages that have popped up -and there's not a real fix for any of them. Not to mention that synchronizing 200 records takes 35-45 minutes with a high-speed connection and brand new computers. This is embarrassing for me as an administrator.

5) Do not change a record from Public to Private, and then back to Public. If you do, that record will not be available in the subscription list. ACT! recreated this problem many months ago, and it's still not fixed. Instead they've been spending their time putting features back into the program that was there in previous versions -due to customer complaints, no doubt.

SOME major problems:

*Severe lack of beta testing
*Overall Speed, or lack thereof, of almost every feature (despite three 'updates' thus far)
*Incredibly long .CSV import times
*Unstable synchronizations; bite my fingernails every day hoping that a remote user doesn't call me telling me they've had yet another problem with the program.
*Poor support (long hold times, no resolution)
*Faulty default and custom report templates
*Lack of administrative flexibility
*****Product design doesn't take into account that prospects are not always people; they can be a business heard of by referral, one they passed on the road and wanted to enter into their DB, etc. Are we not supposed to be able to do this? Product needs to focus more on prospect management than simply contact management to suit our needs. Don't write the program how YOU want it to be; design it how WE want it to be.

Without these things functioning even SEMI-properly, ACT! 2005 Premium for Workgroups is simply a big hunk of useless code, and a gigantic waste of time and money. Literally every site that shows customer reviews for this product consist of negative comments. And stop telling me to "request a feature" when there's an issue with the program; log it yourselves and FIX IT.

Know what you're getting into before buying Act! 2005. I downloaded the free trial from act.com, and am I ever glad I did!

This product apparently has had little testing, and is extremely slow. The single user version uses MSDE with Microsoft replaced a couple of weeks ago with SQL Server express. Do you think Sage would include this new database with Act!? The answer is no. My old year old IBM thinkpad with 384K memory required ONE and ONE HALF MINUTES to load.

Moving from screen to screen is slow also, many times a popup appears saying Loading...

Unlike version 6.0, Act! 2005 will not allow you to add tables to the database, presuming you are sophisticated enough a user/developer to do so. Consequently, this had better be exactly what you want because you're not going to be able to change it.

While the user interface appears cleaner, it too has countless shortcomings. The tab control won't allow you to display fonts larger than 10 points before it truncates the letters, displaying on their top halves. There are two color picker controls, and if you don't find the right one, you really can't customize the color of fonts or backgrounds, etc. with system or custom colors.

Why did they strip functionality that worked? The telephone dialer is nowhere to be found. What were they thinking? I purchased ACT 4 years ago and uninstalled it because of its lack of functionality and went back to Outlook. I though this time Act would finally get their act, so to speak, together. Wrong.

I thank Sage for giving us the opportunity to try the new version for free and a 30 return policy if you do purchase it.

And you guessed it: If you want to use slightly more sophisticated controls on your forms, you have to buy another $99 add on. Listen, these folks are using Infragistics controls and I'm sure licensing a simple grid control doesn't cost anywhere near that.

In short, a great disappointment. I'm going to wait until the end of the year to see what Goldmine introduces as verion 7.0.

I've had the same experience as everyone else. In my case, it was a matter of waiting a couple of years on my own in business to invest in ACT! -- and then making the "buy" decision just in time to run into this horribly slow clunker.

I ordered ACT! 2005 when it first came onto the market, assuming it would be an evolutionary upgrade of the wonderful software I had been hungering to buy for years. Instead, I walked straight into a disaster.

ACT! is slow. Its email client crashes five or six times a day. In fact, it crashes most every time email is received or whenever an alert goes off on the main screen. Some of the basic functions of ACT! have never worked on my powerful Dell laptop; I have written them off as if they never existed.

My first installation was so messed up, tech support finally advised me the only way to make it work was to format my hard drive and reload all my software, installing ACT! before anything else. Well: (1) ACT! still didn't work right, and (2) I spent a week in February formatting and reloading and reconfiguring software carefully so as not to lose any data.

In defense of tech support, I have met some really nice support personnel at Sage Software (formerly Best Software) by phone at their support centers in Georgia and Oregon. I certainly talk to them often enough. I also make use of an oline board to try to trouble shoot or (more often) confirm my problem is everyone else's problem.

I use ACT! every day, and I long for it to work right -- it would be such a powerful part of my life and my business. Right now, its functionality is not much better than Palm Desktop v.4.

And ... speaking of Palm ... ACT! for Palm has never really been stable in my Treo 600. I've tried for months and it still does not work.

The crowning touch: I asked a support engineer a week or so ago (when I was discussing the Palm Link) if ACT! 2006 was worth buying, if only because bigs would be solved and the program would be more fast and sleek. "Don't count on it," the support engineer told me. "It isn't any faster at all."

Buyer -- of ACT! 2005 or ACT! 2006 -- beware...