It has been a busy month….

Phew, just got some time for a blog post!   It has been crazy!  For those that emailed me asking what had happened, I apologise for not getting back to you! 

I would like to point out that during this time, Ricky Gervais and his original podcast series as well as the new free Podfather series have kept me sane!  Excellent stuff!  Get it!


So, where to start…?    I suppose the Apple iMac and finding out that Core Duo does not actually mean 64bit!  Doh!  How did I find this out you ask…   well, simple really…  I tried to install Windows Vista RTM 64Bit and it gave me a nasty error, spat the CD out and told me to go away.   It turns out that the Core 2 Duo is 64Bit…    guess I should stop buying things too quickly!   However, apart from Apple’s Bootcamp not supporting a few of the devices, it works pretty well using the 32Bit version.   I am actually very impressed with the performance, and Outlook 2007 (also RTM’d recently) is much quicker than on my XP machine.

That brings me nicely onto Vista…    Which is now released to manufacturing which meant only one thing was going to happen.   Yes, you guessed it, everyone tried to download from the Microsoft MSDN / Technet / Licencing servers at the same time and promptly brought Microsoft’s download servers to their knees.   It took me 5 days to download 3GB, but WOW it was worth the wait!   Remember people…  if you order a PC with OEM Windows XP or Office 2003 you are entitled to the free upgrade from Microsoft!

SMM100What next?    Oh yes…   My Netstreams project.   It is still early days, and I have finally got over the initial bumps.  I have on the way one of the new Streaming Music Managers for a client, this device is really clever…   essentially, it “sniffs” your network for shared music, indexes the metadata and then gives you 6 streams out to the Netstreams DigiLinX system.  You can read more about it on my site or on the nice freshly redesigned Netstreams Site!

Also, since the release of the Rako Controls DigiLinx Driver, and the soon to be released Honeywell Hometronic Driver, we can now integrate lighting Dimmers and Heating control to the Netstreams system here in Europe.   All very cool and exciting news!

Now some shocking, but good news!

You know how much I give out about Sage and how they don’t listen to customers and essentially dump a product release on you every two years…   well, it turns out that it is a matter of getting the right person!

I found a bug with Sage Line 50 version 12 and 13 (2007) that gives you an error the second time you send a report / invoice / po etc via email PDF export.   The error is on the file ACCREP32.DLL.

I contact a few forums about this issue and was told “you are mad to think that you will get them to fix this in an older release of Line 50” (12).   So, I took on the task of calling support and seeing who I could talk to.    Luckily, I got through to a support member in Ireland who was extremely professional and escalated my problem up the line.   Finally, my message got to the development team in the UK and I was told “It is not an known issue, thanks, we will look after this next Tuesday”.   That was today, and I received an update from them that it was being looked at this afternoon, fantastic news and I hope they release a fix soon!   I also hope that Sage, as it is a large organisation, consider a program like the MVP one….   and start working closer with the community ongoing!

Rugby rugby rugby….

I am not a big fan of the “corporates” getting tickets for sports events, but I suppose that is the way things have gone.   Luckily for me, I managed to land my hand on one of these corporate tickets (thanks Dave) and got a front row sideline seat for the Ireland / South Africa match.   What a game!   Great result for Ireland.   However, the weather was good at this match.

For the Ireland / Australia game, I got a “poor mans” ticket, and ended up on top of the south terrace, uncovered with a gale force wind and rain lashing down from above.   Thanks to Garren, who brought the whisky!   It kept me warm enough to watch the whole game, which again we won…     2 down, one to go with the Pacific Islanders left to play.

That’s the update for now… sure, if I think of anything more, I will post another entry 🙂

  5 Replies to “It has been a busy month….”

  1. jim truscott
    February 5, 2007 at 8:20 am

    Just sent to SAGE.
    ======================

    Gd Day,

    For some time now, we have been experiencing problems with your v12

    When printing invoices, your software treats it as “generating a report”.

    The first attempt is fine. Any subsequent attempt to generate a report/invoice results in the error message

    “Failed to load Report Library ACCREP32.dll – The specified module could not be found”.

    This message is also displayed when “Updating Ledgers” although the ledgers are updated. The update ledger report is not displayed.

    Close Sage and re-start (not re-boot) allows another single invoice to be generated. Again, subsequent attempts produce the same error message – until another close/start paraphernalia.

    Have deleted SAGE and re-installed it. This has not helped.

    Would be grateful for any tips, please. Thanks.

  2. February 5, 2007 at 8:35 am

    Yeah, I should follow up about that.

    Basically, they did not fix it, nor do they seem to want to. In the mean time they updated version 13 so it was *somewhat* stable, but frankly it is still bad.

    I think the pressure from ALL users should be put on Sage to release a V12 update as a matter of urgency!

  3. Jim Truscott
    February 5, 2007 at 10:10 am

    Tks, Nick. Would be interested to hear about your follow up.

    Meanwhile, do you know of a dedicated site where one comment/complain/moan/get tips/etc about trouble with Sage softwear? Thanks.

  4. February 6, 2007 at 5:37 pm

    Hi Jim, Sorry… I approved the post, and forgot to reply 😉

    No, there are sage forums, but the ones I have found tend to bias towards Sage and do not speak out against them. Maybe a little like us MVP’s and Microsoft 😉

    Anyway, point people to this blogpost… and email Sage, and copy the emails here. Community spirit normally wins.

  5. Nick Whittome
    February 8, 2007 at 3:01 pm

    OK, this forum is helpful. A place we can get together for anyone else with this issue:

    Here is the post I started:

    http://www.sageforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=2995&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

Leave a Reply to NickWhittome Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.