Happy Holidays!
To all of you on both sides of the border: Happy Independence Day! Happy Canada Day! We hope you have a great time at your choice of summer activities. We'll be off Monday but re-open as per usual on Tuesday July 5th.

Current Leasing Offers From Citi
Our friend Pat Burke has asked us to post the following current leasing offers from CitiGroup. Some of you may still not be aware that all Suntower Systems' products and services may be leased. Yes, this includes all our software and programming services.

$1 Purchase Option

36 Months

$0 down

$20k-$50K 10.28% promotional interest rate (first year)
 

$1 Purchase Option

60 Months

$0 down

$20k-$100K 8.04% promotional interest rate (first year)

 

Fair Market Value Lease

36 Months

$0 down

$20k-$100K 1.44% implicit promotional interest rate (first year)

(for this one software and services may not exceed 20% of equipment cost)

Looks good? Call or e-mail for further information. Leasing is an often overlooked way to finance IT. But if it makes sense to lease your vehicle, then why not your computing equipment and software? The life span of most computing hardware and software now is easily the equal of most company cars and trucks.
 

Some Quick Security Recommendations
Time flies and so do the dire warnings everyone sees regarding the Internet. We have started to notice 'Warning Fatigue' amongst our customers. This reminds us of the constant colour alerts we used to see after 9/11. After a while, even the most careful people start thinking, 'so what?'. But the threats to your computer are real and in fact, more people are getting hurt now than ever before. It's just that these events have become so much more common place that they no longer grab front page news. In other words, sadly they've become like all other crimes.

Our suggestions:

1. Write your Senator and Congressman. Sorry to get political here, but, despite what you may have heard, the only reason computer crime (and by that we mean not only viruses but also malware and spam) is spreading is because of the active support of your government. Let's make that clear: it thrives because it makes a lot of money for a lot of people and they lobby your representatives and so it goes. Don't believe it? Check it out. Spam and malware are controllable. They do not thrive in other countries as they do here. All efforts to put real teeth into computer crime laws are constantly removed in congress. There are all manner of harsh penalties for those who are caught, but the laws have so many loopholes that about the only people who will ever be successfully prosecuted are college students messing about. The real criminals can never be caught because the guys who spread spyware and spam are huge contributors to local economies. Read that again: the biggest companies spreading malware are so-called legitimate marketers. For example, go to just about any movie directory or shopping directory site. Now run your anti-spyware software. See? You got infected just because you wanted to find out when Star Wars was playing!

2. Get the best anti-spyware software you can. According to every major computer magazine, this currently is CounterSpy http://www.sunbelt-software.com. And no, we don't get paid to say so.

3. Get the best hardware and software firewall you can. You need both. And make certain that your firewall monitors transmissions both inbound and outbound! Linksys seems to make decent 4-8 port units if you have a small office and not too many choices in your area.

4. Use either Firefox or Opera as your web browser. Dump Internet Explorer.

5. Avoid attachments in your e-mails; especially Microsoft Office documents which can be easily stuffed with trojan horses.

6. Never send HTML e-mail---you know, the cute one's with embedded pictures.

7. Never open an e-mail from someone you don't know and definitely avoid Hotmail, AOL and Yahoo mail. If a company hasn't the dough for a real e-mail account,

8. Never open an unsolicited e-mail from a financial institution. They simply do not send them. If it says PayPal, CitiGroup, or whatever

9. In fact, junk just about any unsolicited e-mail whether it looks interesting or not. The price for responding to even the neatest offer is simply too high: your privacy. Remember: e-mail is like unprotected sex. No matter how nice the offer looks, you never know what they are going to do with what you just gave them. You gotta really trust someone these days in order to send/receive e-mail. And never with strangers, please.

10. Use an anti-virus program on every computer in your office. Every computer. And make sure it monitors both inbound and outbound traffic (e-mail messages). That way, if a virus does slip by, it can't transmit itself to other computers in your office or across the Internet. (There have been several interesting court cases recently where unsuspecting business owners who's computers were used as 'zombies' to generate spam where held liable for damages. After all, their machines were sending out the spam!) Courts have started to rule that you are responsible for a de minimus level of due diligence. In other words, you must be a good citizen of the Internet and protecting others from you is a part of that process!

Does this seem to make the internet more trouble than it's worth? We can't disagree with that. Once the bad guys realised that the whole thing was based largely on trust, it didn't take long for the internet to turn into The Wild West. But until better laws are enacted, the above is what you have to do in order to at least have a chance of living a peacable life out on the old Frontier.

Til Next Time!
 

Quick Fix! Difficulty Viewing On-line Help With Windows XP SP2!
Many of you have been complaining of problems viewing the on-line help since upgrading to Windows XP Service Pack2. The problem is that the upgrade, which was designed to patch various security holes related to Internet Explorer inadvertently blocks access to help files like ours which are actually viewed through a built-in version of IE.

You should only notice problems if you (as do most customers) have the help file (SAFE.CHM) installed on a remote (not-local) network drive. There currently is no fix from Microsoft. We suggest that if you need access to the OLH, you copy this file to your local hard drive and make a shortcut to it. (This does not in any way violate our licencing agreement, by the way.)

For those interested in all the gory technical details, we refer you to MS Knowledge Base Article #896358
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896358

Til Next Time!
 

Ciaran's Corner: How Dare You!
We got into a fairly annoyed exchange with a customer this week over SAFE/SQL and upgrades. This coincides nicely with a rant I have been saving up as we bid a fond farewell to SAFE 5.1 and the Soft Velocity file system we co-developed ten years ago and which powered SAFE until V6.

The customer innocently asked if a particular feature was available in SAFE 5.1 Our technician replied that it was not, but was in SAFE/SQL. And then he made the big mistake. He wrote...

---Not in the version of SAFE you have. (You have been asked to upgrade so MANY times we've given up trying.)

Snippy? YOU BET. Did I fire the guy? No, we're related by marriage--not a good idea in a family business. Did I chastise him mightily for his insolence? Well, kind of. But not too much, actually. Because in fact, I'm to blame. I'm constantly on our guys to <ahem> 'encourage' customers to upgrade. Whatever it takes.

Why you! You! YOU!
Jerk? Sorry, but we almost have to be pushy. You in your minds, have many, many good reasons for not upgrading. You don't know what you don't know. You worry about change--even if it's good--disrupting your business. You're trying to manage costs. And most importantly: If it ain't broke, don't fix it! We do understand. But, like the doctor, who understands all the reasons you have for not doing something, we still need you to do it in order to keep the system moving forward. From our point of view, you've just got to do it for your long term good.

Our Point Of View
Hello, people! We're now over two years into SAFE/SQL and we have our list of reasons why you should upgrade. And they are really for your own good (he said, sounding not so much like a doctor, but very much like someone's mother.)

The way we see it, upgrades are the way we deliver a better product to you in an organized fashion. They have many improvements and they have many fixes. Only twice in twenty years have we developed the product to where it required some money from you for the supporting hardware and software. Once in 1996 when we released SAFE for Windows and once in 2003 when we released SAFE/SQL. In neither case did we do this to make more money. We knew there would be resistance and we understood why. But no infrastructure lasts forever. We have to move SAFE in a direction that we see your industry moving.

You're Only In It For The Money!
I've heard this argument so many times... Funny how most people who go to the doctor don't think he's prescribing a drug just to make his boat payment. I can assure you we're in a similar situation. We have no need to arm-twist in order to make our 'boat payments'. And besides, upgrades are free for RSS subscribers so there.

Look, we aren't General Motors...
Huge companies like GM can keep a parts and service inventory for older cars---maybe 10-15 years. In fact, the law says they have to. We simply cannot afford to do so. So we've settled on two major releases (prox 2 years) as our frontier. Beyond that, we can't promise to be able to help you if you run into a problem. If you need custom programming, it's likely to be difficult or much more expensive than if done with our current release. And last but not least, we certainly can't provide bug fixes so if you find a showstopper, we both feel helpless.

No Arm Twisting
So OK, a bunch of you haven't yet made the switch. Same thing happened when we moved to Windows. Don't want to switch. Fine. We're not here to twist arms or make demands. But what we don't want is a repeat of the DOS/Windows situation in 1996 where so many groused about how we were in league with that devil Bill Gates. As then, the handwriting is on the wall: the business IT world needs open standards, we adhere to those standards, SQL is one such standard and that's the end of the story. And if your business is going to be around much longer, you will benefit from this position. As Humphrey Bogart once said as the plane was taking off from Casablanca, 'maybe not now, but soon and for the rest of our lives.'

We're Under The Gun Too!
And did I mention that the tools we use are constantly changing? That's right. For example, the Microsoft programming tools we use to create SAFE change every year. And every few years they make changes which threaten our ability to provide backward compatibility. In fact, we have to keep several versions of our tools around just to support code from two years ago. So you're not the only ones who may feel you're being dragged into the future. It's happening to us all. You can swim with it or fight it.

Sure We Can Be Nice(r)
I know that some of you aren't ready for the changes that these new technologies provide and thus are loath to spend dough before it's needed. I sympathise. Hey, I'm as big a tightwad (...er 'frugal') as anyone. But the Internet, EDI with vendors, on-line ordering are realities that aren't going to go away. By making this final push we committed ourselves (and you if you're with us) to that future.

Now with all that, can we be nicer, sweeter, 50% more tactful? Sure. But am I convinced that it would make any difference? Not really. Because the truth, in my experience, is that the gentler we are about tough issues like this, the easier it simply is for some to simply avoid the decision to move forward. And I don't necessarily want it to be easy. I want you to really understand how much we hate having to inconvenience customers in any way. There is no way on God's Green Earth we would've asked anyone ever to pay one dime to upgrade to SQL Server or Windows Server unless it was absolutely flipping necessary. So no, I don't want it to be 'easy' for you. It sure wasn't for us. We argued about it internally for two years!

But with all that, the raw fact is that some of you will not move to SAFE/SQL, just as some of you stuck with (and are still sticking with!!!) SAFE/DOS. As I said, that's fine. Just so long as we understand each other's expectations.

Now that we've crossed the bridge and shut down SAFE 5.1 we can all relax and be ever so much nicer.

And What About The Customer?
Will the customer in question upgrade? I think so, but not exactly sure yet. I think we can repair whatever damage to the relationship may have been done and their company doesn't really require too much ongoing help so there probably won't be anymore crises any time soon. What worries me, though is that if a crisis does come up for that customer, it will be really painful because the odds are we may not be able to help much. And when an emergency comes, most people aren't interested in who said what, when. What they're interested in is PAIN RELIEF. And it's that not knowing whether we'll be able to help that keeps me up at night.

So at the end of the day, our motives are fairly pure. We want to continue to improve the product and we want to not leave anyone in the lurch. But in order to provide good service to the majority, we sometimes have to limit options for some. The real question for me  as we move forward is: how can we show you motivate more of you to see things as we do?

Till Next Time!

Ciarān Marron
Technical Support Manager
cm@suntowersystems.com

THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. The information contained in this document represents the current view of Suntower Systems on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Suntower Systems must respond to change in market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Suntower Systems and Suntower Systems cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication. INFORMATION PROVIDED IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED 'AS IS' WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND FREEDOM FROM INFRINGEMENT. The user assumes the entire risk as to the accuracy and the use of this document. This document may be copied and distributed subject to the following conditions:
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End of E-News From The Suntower, Volume VII #11