Microsoft launched their much heralded new operating system back in the summer and caught most of the developer community, not to mention the hardware manufacturers, on the hop, having said that they wouldn’t launch until the autumn. Well autumn days are giving way to winter, and many of the glitches have been identified, by the early adopters, software and hardware developers. A couple of weeks ago or so, Microsoft also did a hefty upgrade. So is it safe for Act! users to upgrade yet?

Act! issues caused by Windows 10

Prior to the service pack release they have just brought out these were some of the problems I identified:

• The “default” printer setting was applied to another printer.
• The TCP Port that Act! SQL server instance is listening on, seemed to have changed, because I had to add it to my server firewall in order to allow me access to networked databases.
• I could, and then later in the day couldn’t, access my local Act! databases, but when I logged into another user profile on the PC, theirs was fine. So I had to resort to deleting my Act! preferences and start again.
• If I browsed my network from within Act! e.g. to find an alternative location for my backup, any mapped drives I had on my PC DID NOT SHOW in Act! or a number of other pieces of software for that matter (e.g. Adobe Acrobat).
• “Object not set to an instance of an Object” – whenever I closed Act!, this appeared as an error message. It does not stop you from closing though.

The show stopper for our add-on

Windows 10 did cause problems for users of our quoting add-on, Seamless Opportunities, and our folder creation software, Seamless Folders. I am pleased to say that this documents tab issue has now been resolved. Both programs were crashing anytime I tried to access them. Seamless Opportunities writes a shortcut to the documents tab and Seamless Folders works wholly with it, so it was a huge bugbear. The folks at Swiftpage have created a hotfix, which removes the icon associated with the document type. This appears to have resolved the issue.

So is it any good?

Well, as I said in my last newsletter, for the Windows 8 user, it has brought back much loved Windows 7 functionality – like the start button and desktop – two things I’ve missed, however I still grind my teeth on a daily basis trying to click on the desktop button that is falling off the screen next to the system tray. It does start much faster than Windows 7 though.

How is Act! coping with it?

Act! version 18 is just around the corner and that will be guaranteed to work with Windows 10. For Act! v17 users there is a hotfix (see below) that will solve most of the issues they are likely to face.

Before I go any further, I should repeat some wise words said to me not so long ago in answer to the question “should I update my machine?” “If your PC is more than three-four years old – forget it and live with the software you have. If it is younger than that, then YES you should.”

The fixes

• For the documents tab try this knowledge base article: http://kb.swiftpage.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/38199

• For the closing error: kb.swiftpage.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/38220

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