article in Linux Journal …http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8184

Microsoft recently released Visual FoxPro Version 9.0. Although outside of the normal “office” applications from Microsoft. VFP remains one of the best performing database programs available. It connects to anything and everything. It can form the basis of a web-based applications, functioning as a back-end database, or providing an attractive front end to databases hosted elsewhere, such as SQL-Server and Oracle, or data provided as a web service.

Microsoft positions VFP as a developer’s tool, and it shows. In terms of leverage you can do things in VFP with a fraction of the effort required in Access, especially once you want to do some reporting, or file conversion, or querying. In short, for data manipulation, VFP is king.

So, where does this leave Access, and “the other desktop database”…FileMaker Pro? Access is “just there”…bundled with copies of Microsoft Office Professional. The current version is Microsoft Access 2003, and it offers incremental improvements from previous versions, including greater reliability. Access is is cheap, when bundled, you barely notice the cost. If you need to build a modest application quickly, Access will do the job.

FileMaker Pro is a convert from the Macintosh world. Databases created in Windows can be shared on the Mac and vice-versa. For sheer logic and ease-of-use, Filemaker wins my vote hands down. Filemaker saved the day when we built a photo database of 8,000 photos for a city code office… allowing rapid access to any photo. This application was stored on a Mac server, and served to Windows desktops.

Bottom line: For a quick and dirty single-user desktop database, I would use FileMaker Pro, if I could afford it, or Access if I had it. Once I had to scale up to a real multi-user database, I would seriously consider working with an experienced database developer. Once you establish trust with that person, you are probably best served by using whatever the developer is familiar with. Indeed with a well-designed custom program, users won’t be aware of the underlying development tool used to create the database program.

For ad-hoc data manipulation, using the SQL query language Visual FoxPro is ideal.

Went to a meeting of our local software developer’s alliance…a new organization which has been sponsored by our local community and economic development people. First meeting I’ve been to, and it looks promising.  We had a funny presentation though, by a representative of the Meta Group. (soon to be aquired by Gartner Group). This is a business which has as a slogan Driving Pervasive Integration Through IT Innovation.

Ok…well, the speaker gave a PowerPoint presentation (several times she stood directly in front of the projector) and spent considerable time explaining how the great technology crash of 2000–2001 was caused by, among other things, hype and unrealistic expectations. (Didn’t mention how Gartner and its ilk, when they aren’t driving pervasive integration basically invented hype and unrealistic expectations). One of her final slides was an illustration of a series of columns, each labeled things like “health care”, “human resources”, “security”, and so on. and her point being that we shouldn’t expect to deal with government customers simply within their “silos”…but that we should attempt to sell solutions across clusters of activity… or something like that; that silos were obsolete. At which my neighbor said, in his best flat New England accent, “well, we still got a few of them silos on the farm in Vermont..”.

Just what it says. An effort of the NonProfit Open Source Initiative. Contains case studies and comments about operating system and application software. I would say the desktop is covered nicely…there are good alternatives to Microsoft products. Still, there are holes in the area of accounting and fundraising software. The site includes a “reality check” discussion about how well this all works.

Other links: The Organizer’s Collaborative in Boston who describe themselves thus: ” We are a nonprofit membership organization composed of activists and technically oriented people working to enhance grassroots organizing, research, and movement building by social change organizations.”

Linc – The Low Income Networking and Communications have done some work with obsolete hardware. I know I have this fantasy that 100Mhz Pentium II machines with 256Kb of RAM or less can be loaded with Linux and behave just like a machine 8 years younger. Pehaps if the version of Linux is also eight years old? Red Hat 6.1 circa 1998 loads on some of these old machines.

This site is a gateway to economic statistics from the government and other sources. Find out the mean family income for your state, the relative number of casualties of the war in Iraq, as opposed to other conflicts back as far as the Korean war. Lots of energy statistics. (and it doesn’t look good…)

http://www.nationalpriorities.org

Years ago I asked a friend why he wasn’t using Linux and he said. “Academic pricing for Microsoft products”. I just ordered software for our new server, and it came to about $280.00 for Windows 2003 standard, including 20 user licenses at $6.00 each, and the media for $29.95. This is an incredible deal.

As they say..”dated Linux, married Microsoft”.

Activewords is a automation program on steriods. I tried it and found that it didn’t suit my needs, but it all depends on how you work. See for yourself at their web site. They graciously asked for my comments about the program, so I wrote back the following:

Regarding Activewords:

I’m, perhaps…a somewhat “older” computer user. In general I find if my computer interupts me with some kind of suggestion or pop-up, or if it fills things in automatically, I have found that to be distracting enough that it seems to offset the possible time savings. I’m a fast typist, and when single words are filled in, for example with passwords or phrases in Microsoft Word, I’ve almost completed the typing before the word comes in. So, then I have to:
1. look at the word
2. determine whether it is or is not what I want
3. confirm the action or the word
4. or keep typing.

Frankly, it is easier just to keep typing.

So, I’ve turned off those functions in Word. When programming in Visual Studio/Visual FoxPro/Java I turn off “tool tips”, and Intellisense, and all that stuff, (which is not to say that I don’t call it up once in a while to review the syntax of something).

I also use keyboard shortcuts a lot, and I’ve memorized most of them for Windows. So, the benefit of Activewords in that respect is less than might be for someone who uses the mouse a a lot. I also have dual 21″ screens…so once things are open, then I have enough screen real-estate to keep things open…and I tend not to have more than two or three applications open at a time anyway.

I do use (and pay for!) some add-ins… X-1 has been in use for several months, and OnFolio has become indespensible. These tend to sit behind the scenes and come up only on demand, and they leverage my ability to find information without adding to my distraction.

I work with a lot of older computer users and novices. I find that they suffer greatly from the complexity of the Windows interface. ActiveWords would be a godsend to those people who know what they are automating…but could be a nightmare for someone who doesn’t know what they are doing yet. Clearly for a slow typist, or a disabled person, Activewords would be a godsend, and I don’t deny that for a large segment of the population Activewords is just the ticket.

I basically detest cell phones, but since I’m spending a fair amount of time away from the office, I finally decided to go for one. Because I’m in the process of, as they say, establishing my usage pattern I signed up for a prepaid plan from Verizon. This works like this:
You buy the phone, the activation and get a number. You also buy minutes, in my case I bought two hours worth of minutes for $15.00. Total cost of phone+minutes was $180.00.
Minutes cost 10 cents. However, an initial connection is billed at 25 cents, so the first minute of any call costs you 35 cents, with subsequent minutes billed at the 10 cent rate.
Before a call begins to ring, a voice comes on telling you how many minutes or hours you have for this call. (Of course, this takes at least 15 seconds of your precious time, every time the person is on….and then then the phone rings at the other end.) So even if you don’t get connected, you still pay the air time.)
The plan has U.S. long distance, with no roaming charges. I’ll be testing this on a couple short trips. There are no free minutes, or free weekends. If you are roaming off the Verizon network then the cost is 98 cents per minute, added to the normal charge. (ouch).
I started this in January, and I bought another two hours of minutes on the web. All purchases are charged via a credit card. It is now March, and I still have almost two hours left. So, far, then I’ve paid $210.00 in upfront costs. However, I’m managing about two hours per month of time, which at $10.00 – $15.00 or so is a lot less than even the cheapest prepaid plan.

I suppose it is inevitable. I started my Prius hybrid yesterday, and the dash and display lit up like a Christmas tree, with several unsettling lights including a red one with a giant exclamation point stabbing through an outline of the car. Called the dealer. They said “We’ve seen several of these. Try driving it and if something is really wrong, we’ll come down and tow it to our service center.” So today I started it and only one light came on, the “Check Engine” light. I drove it a couple of miles to the convenience store to buy wine. Picked out an Austrian Gruener Veltliner. Restarted the car. The lights were gone.
This is the first time since owning the car for two and a half years that I have had to reboot the car. But can you imagine if the car computer was running Windows?

I can’t quite understand it when vendors make it difficult to give them money. Consider the following sequence of events that I went through to order a $3,000 server with Dell.
1. Go to Dell academic web site
2. Configure server online. This presents points of interest, because several items have a stated price of $ABC, then in red, a special offer price of $XYZ, good for a limited time, or free, or whatnot.
3. Save configuration as an ‘eQuote’
4. Attempt to retrieve eQuote for printing, which failed.
5. Called Betsy, the Dell rep that I used for previous two purchases. (name changed to protect the possibility that the reps themselves are mere cogs in this labyrinth.)
6. After listening to a five minute recording of ‘marketing speak’, she says she is unavailable and I should contact her backup rep.
7. Leave message for backup rep
8. Wait two days for callback
8. Send eMail to backup rep
9. Wait 1 day
10. Backup rep “Jean” finally calls. I tell her I have an eQuote with my fully configured server that she should pull up, so that we can verify the hardware and go ahead with the purchase.
11. She can’t pull up the quote.
12. She then says…’Oh…it is a file server…you need to talk to our file server technical folks…I can’t handle this. Let me put you through to them…
13. Hands me off to “Thomas”.
13. Thomas can’t pull up the eQuote. The quote was saved on the academic web site, not the “small business” web site. (where it is called a shopping cart, but you have to be logged in with your “premier login”. (We qualify for academic pricing, always…as we are an educational facility of out-of-school youth, among other things…)
14. I recite the specs from memory and he types them into his quote software. I also spcify an HP tape drive which was offered on the academic web site…he says he can’t “source” that drive…would I accept another? I want Windows 2003 Server academic….he can’t provide that either. So I tell him, not to include software in the quote.
15. He asks if I want an HP switch. (This is the equivalent of “you want fries with that?”) I say I’m ordering a server. He says, what kind of switches to you have? I say 3 Hewlett Packard switches and we’ve got a dozen free ports and I DON’T BLOODY NEED A SWITCH I’M TRYING TO GET A SERVER WITH A TAPE DRIVE.
16. He says “Oh…, its just that we’re offering a free switch right now”.
17. He sends me the quote via eMail. It includes Windows 2003 Server software and a keyboard, neither of which I ordered.
18. I eMail back, asking to delete the Win 2003 software.
19. He sends another quote for the server (without the tape drive).
20. He sends a quote for the tape drive. Note that both quotations include obscure part numbers, and almost no description for the items, nor do they show the line-item pricing for the items. If I attempt to go back on the web site to see what I’m ordering….do a search on PV100T, for example, it doesn’t come up. So for comparison purposes, the quotes are useless.
21. Both quotes include a links for completing the orders online. I do this.
22. I then eMail him confirming that I completed the orders, and I wanted to make sure that even though there were two quotes that it was clear that it was a single order and I wanted the hardware for the tape drive connected to the server.
23. He called back, some hours later and said he would try to make this happen.
24. I also mentioned the difficulty of this purchase and he said I should call him directly next time.

Isn’t that what the last person said?