My frustrating small-business FileMaker life

[HazMatt]

Problem # 1

My boss doesn't want to spend any money.

Problem # 2

We HAVE been spending money and upgrading our PCs and not our Macs

Of our 19 computers running FileMaker...

9 are PCs, most of them new and running Windows XP.

10 are Macs, most of them iMacs running Mac OS 9 (1 is running OS X, and I'm having printing problems with it)

The graphic design workstation I am working on is a B&W G3 400 MHz. We bought it new in January of 1999. I recently requested a G5 upgrade costing 1/2 the amount of our latest PC purchase, but the request was rejected due to budget constraints (we don't actually have a budget, its more like, "What do we want to pursue NOW?"). The most powerful Mac we have is a 600 MHz G3 iMac. As some of you know, Mac OS X is noticably slower than Mac OS 9 on these machines. As most of you know, FileMaker 7 does not run on Mac OS 9. This may be a testimony to the general longevity of Macs, but I don't care. Mac OS 9 sucks, and I want to work on machines that can comfortably run Mac OS X.

Problem # 3

Most people here have a negative opinion of the Mac (I am the lone Mac advocate who supports both the PCs and the Macs). It seems at least once a day somebody has to make a remark blaming the Mac or FileMaker for something. Sometimes the complaint is real, but most of the time it is out of ignorance or poor joking. I am sick of it.

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I want to make systems that work well, but I am constantly finding myself working with and fixing old technology and I perceive that I am wasting time because of it. I know Mac OS X and FileMaker 7 are the future, but they seem so far away from where we are now.

I know this sounds terribly hopeless, but that's how I feel. I am looking for encouragement and advice.

[ronnie524]

Problem #1: No boss wants to spend money:) So in life as an employee, we are expected to use our imagination to meet the bosses demands.

Problem #2: We got to think, do we really need a better computer? or we wish we had a better computer (bosses thinking). You will have to view your bosses point of view, otherwise he will not look at yours at all. For him to actually understand, is for you to prove that you could save the company 100.00/ for every 101.00 they spend.

tobe continued....

[Fenton]

Well, I don't really want to get into the cross-platform wars, though my preference is definitely Mac, for the AppleScript support alone; which comes in very handy with graphics and FileMaker. I can't wait until the day when they can both platforms can "just get along," though I'm not holding my breath.

I have build solutions for several small businesses. In every case I have seen data which was flat-out incorrect. And in every one of those cases it was difficult to tell, because the interface had no layouts for troubleshooting, even if there was anyone who knew how, which there wasn't. I also saw people wasting hundreds of man (and woman) hours doing repetitive and error-prone manual operations which could and should have been scripted.

Example: I designed a solution for local small manufacturing firm, who was trying to run their entire business with ACT!. They were able to immediately cut their office staff from 5 to 4 (she was going back to school anyway :-), as one person was spending most of their time finding information and taking it people who needed it (and who couldn't find it from where they were).

I find myself saving I would guess almost 20% on my time developing in 7 rather than 6. I expect it to be 20% or more when I become proficient; and as FileMaker continues to improve it. Sometimes I find myself easily doing things (useful things :-), which would have been really difficult with 6.

Example: Today I made a Notes table, which shows notes from either Owners or Properties, which have a many-to-many relationship, via a "join" table. Each of the 2 portals shows the correct notes in each table, for either all properties for an owner, or all owners for a property. Names of each were available in the other, with no additional calculations needed, just a couple of little Table Occurrences (where relationships come from and go to, you'll be learning a lot about those). Whole thing took about an hour, and much of that was layout work (getting crowded).

FileMaker 7 has new image display capabilities, much like html links, which could vastly simplify any kind of image catalog database. You no longer really need to import image files to display them.

I stopped using OS 9 because its occassional crashes threatened my work, as I will not continue to develop a database that's crashed. I have NEVER had a crash on OS 10.3.4. Sometimes I have to Force-Quit FileMaker 7, but only to get it to quit; there's no files open. It's not a freeze/crash situation; hopefully it will be fixed. I've also never had a virus that did anything, though I receive PC viruses regularly.

For professional work you need professional tools. Maybe not the top-of-line dual G5, but a 400 MHz G3 is definitely ready for the pasture. If they are depending on FileMaker they should support their developer. Because doing so will save them time and money every time they use that solution, and you need to start learning 7, because they are going to want it sooner or later.