Which product do i need?

[bullpen79…]

Have an office w 4 computers.  Need to have act installed on each machine, where each machine is a unique user. Is there a product that would allow for that? 

Which product would that be?  Also needs to run on windows 2000.

[rbrust]

There's a few more questions that need to be answered, primarily, what kind of, if any, sharing are you planning/wanting to do with this data.  Also somewhat important is are these desktops/laptops - meaning are the laptops going to be taken from the office.  Another one that came up is if these are Windows 2000 machines, what is the CPU/Memory amount.

Post a bit more info, and we'll try to help you out.

[bullpen79…]

Sorry for the sketchy info in original post.

4 desktop units. They don't move. 4 users need access to a master database simultaneously. (4 would be ideal; in reality it's mainly 2 users logged in to the database at any given time. 

Machines are older. P3/512K ish. 

Act 6.0 is working just great with the exception of our newly acquired excel export problem. Our company is moving into the current decade by using a spreadsheet to record sales calls, and I need to make the space shuttle look like an Edsel. 

It may well be that  ActPak (recommended by someone at actaddons.com) is the best solution to this. 

Essentially, the new format involves qualifying prospects on Sheet1, and if we deem them worthy of follow up, we flag them with an identifier in column B, and then copy all accounts with that identifier to another sheet, to separate them for further call activity.

My hope is that I can build a simple report that looks like excel on paper (without the cell borders) and that way it will translate well into excel. 

I'm going to petition for our continued use of ACT, but the corporate flexibility factor when it comes to people using thier own solutions isn't great...even if they are worlds better.

Thanks for any input, list. 

[jnpurdy]

Well, I think ACT fits the bill to a "T"; however, there are some concerns I have.

It is clear that your hardware seems to be a little antiquated compared to today's standards.  After reading your description, it seems that the company will be spending more on trying to keep the spreadsheets up to date than it would be to bring the systems up today's standards with ACT 2010.  If you are only keeping up with a small number of prospects then maybe a spreadsheet is fine, but I suspect you need to track more than 50 or so.  The user's computers do not need to be power systems, in fact they can be systems based on the Atom processor or a netbook / nettop.  One computer holding the "master" database should have a little more power, but for a small office it doesn't have to be an enterprise class server.

In my opinion, the way to make it look like an Edsel is to keep the screens very simple ... maybe even remove some of the more advanced tabs like "web info" and show how to use pre-populated drop downs when completing a call or meeting.  No real typing. 

The value will be the reports that you are able to produce from their daily use. 

Well, a little rambeling, but hope this thoughts helped you think this through.

[ghollister]

Please keep in mind, that with Windows 2000, the highest version of ACT! you could use would be 2007 (9.0). To use the current versions of ACT! (2008-2010) you would need Windows XP Pro or higher and recommend at least a P4 processor and 1 GB RAM (2GB for the machine hosting the database).

[bullpen79…]

Ok, last question for now. ....

If I need Act running on four separate desktop systems (to support four different users), do I need four unique copies of ACT or will one do it all? 

[ghollister]

You will only need one copy of the software. You will need 1 license for each active user. Multiple licenses can be put onto a single serial number.