Many people have mixed feelings about class action lawsuits, seeing as how the only real winners are usually the lawyers. But is such litigation more justified against a software company that keeps putting out a buggy product? That was the question confronting one reader when he received notice of a settlement involving Sage Software's Act! 2005.

As with many readers previously (see "Some Sage Advice"), the reader wrote me earlier this year about his frustration over how Sage has handled Act since acquiring it. "After 20 years as an Act! Certified Consultant I'm hanging it up because of the current got-to-have-this-year's-version mentality of Sage. They put out buggy products and don't fix them because they are too busy with next year's release. They've left their client base in the lurch in the process. I was in the first class of Act! Certified Consultants back when Contact Software was in Dallas and have been one ever since, through today. But I am dropping the product in 2008 - at least my formal affiliation with Sage. I've had it with their total revenue mentality and their terrible end-user support from Bangalore."

Sage's apparent philosophy of bringing out a new version every year of the contact management software is the source of all the problems, the reader believes. "Since Act! 2005 was released and took the product to SQL, Sage has been releasing a new version every September. Conventional wisdom is to wait for the first service pack before deployment and that is what I do with my clients. But six months after release of this year's model we start hearing all about next year's model. There used to be three years or so between releases --- time to stabilize the current product, issue service packs to address issues, and be responsive to other products with which Act! had linkages. Not anymore. I think the final blow came in January last year when Office 2007 hit the street for general users. Word 2007 would not work with Act! 2007, released in September 2006. Any time a new version of Office came out in times past, the current owner of Act! would be quick to issue a patch to make that version compatible with Office. But this time Sage made it clear that Act 2007 would not be compatible with Office 2007. Period. End of statement. Users would have to wait for Act! 2008 in September 2007. And of course because it was a version upgrade they would have to pay for this fix for Office 2007. That left people in the lurch."