"I too have been an Act user for over ten years," wrote one reader in response to the story of a longtime Act user who upgraded one time too many. "I always upgraded to keep up on the latest features. This year I upgraded to Act 7.0 (also called Act 2005), and it has practically put me out of business. I use Act to keep in touch with client groups through postcards. Act 7.0 cannot print labels in landscape. It does not print addresses on envelopes on the correct side of the printer, it does not merge correctly with MS Word, and it cannot add sub-groups without crashing out of the contact. I could go on -- it is a mess. I had a good Best Software contact, but once the problems with Act became very apparent he quit communicating."

To be fair, some readers pointed out that Best -- while it was still calling itself that -- had made it clear it might break some eggs in its complete rewrite of Act last year. "I watched the Best website for information on Act 2005 before I bought it - I am just now beginning to use it - however, I had no illusions about what I was getting into," wrote a reader who had not used Act previously. The reader said that, starting last September, Best has prominently posted a number of updates on its website with expected timelines for the delivery of missing features and fixes. "It seems that Best Software has made an effort to communicate with current and prospective customers. Perhaps they could have done more, but in hindsight, this is better than some situations that I have seen."

Several readers from the Act add-on community told of their dismay over the problems besetting the latest version of Act. "I can't tell you how many horror stories I've heard about (Act) 2005," wrote one reader. "The two-way synching is almost comical because they hired an outside company to do it, but put so many restrictions on them that the link is deadly slow and one-way. Their own link -- CompanionLink -- is many times faster and syncs both ways. They don't mind; they get paid when you buy the program and paid when you have to buy CompanionLink to get the functionality you should have gotten. Best announced their ship date a year in advance and, come hell or high water, 7.0 was shipping August 24th. Don't look now, but they've announced 8.0 too -- before 7.0 is even fixed. The consultants and I, and many others, are praying for someone to wake up and pay attention to their customer base. We don't want to be the PackRat of the 21st century."

While some of the bugs in the new version have now been fixed, some readers are having problems getting help even with older versions of the software. "Our office uses Act 6.0, and we seem to be losing appointments after they are scheduled," a reader wrote recently. "We are synching via e-mail to other computers and are getting discrepancies in contact numbers and appointments. Several times a day we are getting fatal errors and having to shutdown Act. Where can we go for help?"

And another reader reports that the name change doesn't seem to keep Sage from thinking that it knows best, so to speak. "Act 2005 Premium for Workgroups server includes a network service that allows remote databases to sync with the master database," the reader wrote a few weeks ago. "The only problem is that if a user logs into the master server and then logs out, the service warns it will shut down on logout with no option for the user to leave the service running. Act offers no secure way around this. Worse yet, Best/Sage Software thinks this is the way it should be! The solution on the Sage website: 'Act 2005 is working as designed.' They think the administrator should just violate all security and stay logged in. The scary thing is they charge server per-seat based prices for the Premium Workgroup, but they're using single-user desktop quality attitudes."