Cross Platform and FMP5 - FMP 5.5 questions

[tcano]

Hi-

We have a very small office (under 10 people), and have been using FMP as long as I can remember. We recently upgraded to 5 (right before 5.5 was released, go figure). Since we don't have an extra Mac lying around, the office manager hosts. Needless to say, the performance is less than stellar- lots of crashes, speed of host computer is horrible, etc. It finally occurred to me (after reading it in the FMP 5 manual) that we could use the never-touched Gateway PC to play host. I don't have the software for this yet- I'm still trying to convince my boss that this is our best bet. So here are my questions (sorry for the long intro):

1. Will there be a problem using a PC with 5.5 to host 7 Macs with 5.0? We can't afford to upgrade all the Macs, nor can we afford Server. If that's the only option for using the Gateway as host, can someone give me another suggestion?

2. About the backup feature... is there a way to do this without shutting down the dbase? I just don't know a lot about how the backup works (we don't use the auto backup right now- we just bring down the file, back it up, and restart). Any thoughts?

Thanks for any suggestions. I'd hate to waste $250 (not to mention look like an idiot!).

T

[Kaemena]

I am working under a similar conditions.

- There is no problem to host FM 5 from a Mac or PC running 5.5 or vice versa.

- your backup question. I am making frequent backup copies from an open file. This works most of the times fine. If you open the saved file, it will come with the message that the file was not closed properly and that a consistency check will be performed. Maybe there are better solutions....

- how you are going to connect your Macs and the PC ?? I am using Dave from www.thursby.com works great!!

[ August 18, 2001: Message edited by: Kaemena ]