FW: A filePro Holiday Greeting & Newsletter
John Esak
john at valar.com
Thu Dec 17 10:10:26 PST 2009
Hello,
I'm taking the onus of posting this newsletter and Holiday greeting from
FpTech. I can't tell you how happy I am to read this note. I would say
that all of us would love to see something like this periodically. And, if
FpTech doesn't have the manpower to do it say quarterly or (good God
monthly)... I'll bet one of us would take on the chore each time_spec to do
it for them. In other words, pick out some new things that have been
learned, some new feature or two, some just plain readable and/or
interesting stuff about filePro... And send it to them. They could then
edit/add/modify/delete/proof it in whatever way and send it out to their
mailing list. Who knows, just an idea. I would volunteer to do the first
one for end of January. (Though, knowing me like I do... It might be quite a
bit longer.... :-).
Anyway, I'm cross-posting this to our beloved mailing list since I have not
seen it sent by them... And they might have not felt it fair to send to this
list. To my mind, and I'm guessing everyone else's here, it is a welcome
piece of communication. I would like to publicly thank whoever put this
together and just say, bravo. In future, don't feel the need to tie such
filePro-related news to a Holiday. Just send it along to this list as well
as to your resellers/developers. I'm sure we all will appreciate it.
While I'm at it, I might say that throughout reading the whole note, I kept
expecting there to be a plug or suggestion to buy some filePro product for
the Holiday. Since they didn't do it... And I think they would have had
every right to do so, I'll do it *for* them. I don't know if they have any
specials or discounts or anything. I haven't spoken with anyone at the
company since the meeting at Larry Hoover's house whenever that was.
However, you could call and ask, or you could just call and buy something
whether there is a discount or not. Why not buy a copy of xfer for Windows
and Unix, or maybe get a copy of fpSQL (if that is still available, I don't
even know). Maybe buy a few more user licenses that you've been needing, or
just get a copy of the latest version for your home machine or laptop.
Heck, I don't know, just make some effort to support the company. I do know
that I was very happy to hear they managed through this past year okay, if
not with banner sales. And I know that I would dearly love to see a similar
letter or one with even more accomplishment and better sales 12 months from
now at the next Holiday season. For this little program to make its way
through the four decades since the very first computer toy ever built...
Through working pretty damn well on some of the biggest, most awesome
business servers of today... Well, it's an amazing feat, and there aren't a
handful of other programs out there that can also make that claim.
I wish them well, and thanks again for the news update, the new version, and
all the B,S & T it took to keep filePro surviving all this time. 1979 to
2009, thank God, that isn't carved into a gravestone this year. :-) And you
know, all the new generation Z'ers would it be now? They are all saying
that 40 is the new 20 aren't they? Well, if they're not, they should be.
Dare I say it... Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone.
John Esak
-----Original Message-----
From: FpTech Sales [mailto:sales at fptech.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 17, 2009 10:15 AM
To: john at valar.com
Subject: A filePro Holiday Greeting & Newletter
Hello filePro customers.
The holiday season is once again here. Even with the
hard economic times, we have had a pretty decent year
and hope that all of you also have had as much success
as possible in our stressful economy.
We have signed up many new developers who never heard
of filePro until they inherited some customers. They
evaluated filePro and the customer's needs and elected
to become developers after realizing, in the high
volume environments, that filePro was far superior to
anything that they could otherwise recommend. We wish
to welcome them to our family of growing filePro
resellers and wish them much success.
Revision 5.6.10 has been released and is ready for
download. You can review the readme at:
https://www.fptech.com/Products/Docs/rmfp5610.txt
DID YOU KNOW?
--------------------
filePro 5.6 has been installed and operates correctly
on Windows 7. Like Vista, just do not install in the
root of the C drive.
--------------------
filePro 5.6 has been installed and operates correctly
on a MAC. Did we really say that? Yep. Well, it
works on a MAC that is running Windows on MAC with
their product called Parallel Desktop. There were no
issues with licensing or printing. Pretty cool.
--------------------
"DISPLAY" by itself will refresh the fields on the
screen, leaving the rest as-is.
"DISPLAY (@SN)" will redraw the entire screen,
clearing out things like SHOW statements that might
have been drawn on the screen.
--------------------
Windows has changed how they store un-install
information. Our shield does not handle the new
location at this time. If you ever wish to
un-install filePro, use the filePro utility:
Start-Programs-fP Technologies-Uninstall filePro.
--------------------
filePro doesn't, and never did, allow partial-key
index searches on date fields.
In order to do a partial-key index search, the field
must sort in ASCII order, such as the "*" edit, or any
local- or global edits. System edits, such as the
date types, do not sort in ASCII order. For example,
a (10,mdyy/) field does not have all the Aprils
together, and therefore could not search on "04/" as
a key.
--------------------
Windows error codes can be found here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms681381.aspx
These codes are sometimes helpful in diagnosing errors
that may be reported by filePro. If you have the
environmental variable PFSHOWWINERROR=ON set in your
config file, filePro will report the actual windows
error number and the above url will detail the error.
Many errors reported by filePro have nothing to do with
filePro.
--------------------
If a record is selected during the sort/select phase,
and it gets deleted/reused before it gets reached
during the output phase, then yes filePro will use the
new record.
We are not sure what happens if the record was deleted,
but not yet reused. We believe it simply gets
silently skipped.
If this could be a problem with a particular report,
don't use the "-u" flag on the report command line
option.
--------------------
DID YOU KNOW?
--------------------
Norton does it again. A recent Norton anti-virus
update caused a major support problem. For some
reason, yet to be figured out, Norton decided that
p.exe on Windows was performing a 'High Risk Function'
and removed it from several customers systems. At
that point of course, filePro would not run. There is
a warning box and if the user takes their time to read
it and evaluate it and drill down through the hoops
that Norton displays, you can restore p.exe and
exclude it from the Risk Management process. Of
course most don't even know what p.exe is and assume
that Norton knows what it is doing.
We recommend avast! (http://www.avast.com/index.html)
Norton and McAfee historically have been too intrusive
and use way too many resources. Plus they cost more.
PCTools is another very good product.
--------------------
DID YOU KNOW?
--------------------
That BackupEDGE is certified filePro Partner.
edge.transfer will allow archives to be transferred
from any medium to any medium, such as
- Disk to tape
- FTP to DVD
- Tape to AWS
You get the idea. BackupEDGE archives are re-formatted
automatically, and re-segmented as necessary.
We see lots of uses, including...
- Do a fast backup to a disk archive, transfer
periodically to tape for off-site.
- FTP backups daily, send one weekly to Amazon or a
remote FTP site.
The README and example transfer script, are at:
ftp://ftp.microlite.com/pub/transfer.
--------------------
If you want something inexpensive but very versatile
take a look at NetGear's ReadyNAS product line.
(www.readynas.com).
These little boxes are Ethernet NAS devices that
support Windows, Mac, Linux and Unix. They also
support sharable USB printers.
For $399.00 you get a box with one 500GB SATA drive,
you can add another for RAID 1 (configures it
automatically). The $399 box (ReadyNAS duo) is
available at BestBuy if you want to get it a try.
(easy to return)
Their product line goes up to 1-2U rack NAS devices
For a very good presentation of the product, visit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sD3BjhOjq8&feature=related
--------------------
For those of you who made it this far,
we wish you a very Happy Holiday season
and a most successful and healthy New Year.
>From all of us at fP Technologies, Thank you!
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