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askSam 7 Professional on Bits du Jour
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Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Apr 13, 2009 at 05:42 PM
askSam 7 Professional will be available at Bits du Jour on Thursday 16 April. The discount is considerable:
Deal Price: $99.95
List Price: $395.00
More here: http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/asksam-7-professional/
I’ve never worked with askSam, just briefly tried it once long ago, so my post is not a recommendation. I’d be myself grateful for any informed opinion from people who have experience with the program.
Alexander
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Apr 13, 2009 at 06:44 PM
I would love to be able to recommend askSam. Alas, I can’t.
The concept is great. Drop everything into a free form bucket and find it as needed. Unfortunately, it isn’t that easy.
To be able to run reports, you need to set up fields in your records, and I’ve always found this process to be squirrelly. That is, I seem to have to jigger with the layouts and am never able to get them just right. The same holds true for building reports.
All and all, I’ve always been frustrated by askSam. At $99 it is still overpriced, in my opinion.
Steve Z.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Apr 13, 2009 at 09:27 PM
Steve, many thanks.
I just saw that in the BdJ promotion page there is a long post (3 consecutive ones to be precise) of a certain lady who appears to be a very frustrated askSam customer. She has provided enough sordid details to make the offering quite unattractive, if what she suggests is true.
For me the main thing is that the bugs, including instabilities, don’t seem to be sorted out.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Apr 13, 2009 at 10:34 PM
You are welcome, Alexander. The one thing askSam used to excel at was searching its data. It would return results lightning fast and do fuzzy seaches. But we the advent of desktop search engines, this is no longer a big advantage.
I do feel somewhat bad for the developer of askSam. This is a database with a long history. It is too bad that it has succumbed to time and bloat and whatever else is ailing it. In some ways it reminds me of InfoSelect, another venerable info manager that also seems to have become a bloated, useless dinosaur. Both applications have their lineage date back to DOS. Both have relied upon loyal customers paying big fees to upgrade. Neither has been able to really create a “modern” information manager. I suspect when you do rely on your past customers upgrading, you may have less incentive to be innovative.
Steve Z.
Posted by Jonathan Probber
Apr 14, 2009 at 12:34 AM
Info Select began life as a sharp, fast DOS app called Tornado Notes. I loved it and used it constantly. When the braintrust decided to make it everything to everyone, it lost its lustre. I used Tornado Notes, Memory Mate and XyWrite II+ in those days, and was probably far more productive than I am now.
Jon