Another conversion from SCO !!!

From: Michael Soibelman (soibelman_at_sbcglobal.net)
Date: 03/31/05 

Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 05:14:46 GMT

I just started working at a capacitor manufacturer. They mentioned that
they have an old Unix system and that they are having trouble with it. So
I looked at it today. It's running are 'favorite', "love to hate it", OS,
SCO UNIX !!! What garbage !!!!! The company they got the system from
installed a program which they charged $200.00 a month to lease !!! ARRGH!

As of about six months ago someone screwed up the system. Getting support
just didn't happen. So they've been using the system in a limited way.
The software is an order entry system which tracks the job through to
completion. It automatically backs up the data to an old tape drive, or at
least it's supposed to ! I looked at the backup file and it appears to
have been backed up today. So, I believe the data has been saved.
However, when running the program and trying to do a summary report, no
data prints out !! This system is useless and I will have quite a bit of
fun trying to recover the data !!! The person using this machine was so in
the dark she didn't even know how to do standard Unix/linux commands such
as ls -l to see how recently here data files were updated... I'm a linux
user and though this was my first time on a 'Unix' box I was already way
ahead on the learning curve !! 100 points for 'FREE' as in 'Freedom'
software !!!

So I need to find a software package to replace there antiquated,
proprietary package. The software is used to take orders for parts
(capacitors) and to track the job to completion. They also need to print
invoices from this system. Nothing complex here. They want to use there
own invoices with there company name, logo, etc...

The present Accounts Receivable report includes the following fields:
Invoice#, Customer ID, Customer P.O.#, Date, Posting Period, Total Amount,
Possible Discount, Discount Allowed, Amount Paid, Posted ?

The present Order Processing / Detailed Backlog (by part #) report includes
the following fields:
Part ID, Job#, Order#, Customer ID, Name, Scheduled Quantity, Remaining To
Ship, Scheduled Ship Date, Unit Price, Extended Price.

So that's it. When the boss looks at a report he needs to know the present
status of any existing/past order. They need to generate invoices. They
need to keep everything on a back up device. For the volume of orders they
take a secondary hard drive is probably a better idea than tape !!

I will get them a new computer which will probably dual boot, since all
there other boxes are Windows boxes. Though this is not necessary it will
make the owner more comfortable !!! Eventually, I'll try to switch everyone
to Linux !! What I'm asking you, my fellow Linux users, is what software
package you would recommend to replace there legacy package ??? I want
suggestions from people who are using such software. Recommendations will
be evaluated based on functionality and price. As I said earlier, this is
a relatively small operation, taking in about 5-10 orders per day on
average. I'd like the boss to be able to log onto the system from his
Windows box primarily to allow him to review the status of any particular
order as well as a summary of the past/present months jobs.

By the way, the greedy bastards who supplied the previous Unix software
package wanted to charge them....are you ready....$5,000.00 to upgrade !!!
Now I see why so many companies are leaving SCO for Linux !!! Value and
FREEDOM from software lock-in !!!

I want to thank all the respondents to this e-mail who have real life
experience with such an order tracking/invoicing system in advance !!
This is a real world example of why I switched to Linux. Lets show yet
another group of people the power of FREEDOM software....:~)

Thank you again !!! Linux rocks !!!

P.S. This will be a Novel/SuSE 9.3 install next month !! At $100.00 plus
the price of the above software package I bet I can keep it WAY less than
$5,000.00..............Including a new computer !!!

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