The reader also feels there's been a bloatware problem with recent versions of Act!. "Sage has tied development tightly around the .NET framework and SQL, and that has raised the complexity and demands of the product. Small companies, historically the bread and butter of Act!'s installed base, would no longer be able to maintain their systems without help from more expensive IT specialists --- not to help them USE the product, just to make it behave. The core concepts of Act!, which are very good, have been supplemented by features that most of my small business clients do not use (whoopee, another metrics dashboard in Act! 2008)! The simple elegance of contact management - the heart and soul of Act! -- has gone away. Lost to gee whiz bells and whistles and a difficult to maintain product. And a totally revenue driven company."

"Sage is doing the same thing with TimeSlips and PeachTree," the reader added. "I get their mailings about the new release of these products, the upgrade costs, and the pending demise of support for a product three years old. So in 2008 stick a fork in me. I'm done! I think there are millions of users out there angry at Sage for painting them into this box. And where are they going to go? Outlook? I don't think so. Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2007 has some nice features but it is cumbersome to use and brings Outlook to its knees. Oh, well."

Just by coincidence, the week after writing me the reader received a notice in the mail of a settlement by Sage in a class action lawsuit over defects in Act! 2005. The reader was less than wildly enthusiastic. "No admission of liability, and they are compensating folks at a whopping $47 per license! Gee, I feel better. How'd they arrive at $47? That's a totally weird number and doesn't cover anything. I won't apply -- as an Act! consultant they'd certainly disqualify me anyway. Besides, what would $47 buy -- some beers and burgers for you and me?"

Sure, when you've suffered at the hands of a company, the compensation a class action settlement offers is almost always going to seem ridiculous. And you know the lawyers are the ones who are really getting the money. But I am pleased to see this particular settlement, just because it is a software company having to pay a price for an obvious pattern of putting out buggy releases.

That hasn't happened as often as it should have. Years ago, for example, a rather similar case was brought against Corel after its own got-to-have-this-year's-version syndrome produced a series of very buggy CorelDraw releases. Corel's lawyers easily dragged the case out for years with licensing obstacles and the like until the case finally just died. So that Sage did not succeed in blocking this action is perhaps a good sign.

What do you think? If there'd been a few more successful class actions over buggy software like Act! 2005, would we have better-quality software today? Post your comments below or write me at Foster@gripe2ed.com.