Studio Manager Bulletin

Introducing Studio Manager 7.0 Beta 1.0

UPDATE: ***Beta 2 now available!***

Hi folks. I got the official Beta 1 done (whoopee!!!) and sent it out to Studio Manager 7 customer #2 in Japan at 4 am today! This 1.0 Beta is not for wimps or those who require perfection. According to Tom Peters, "Mess is the Message." We live in crazy, turbulent times, so you might want to get at it and start learning.

If you want to get started with Studio Manager 7, now's the time to get a good deal and get going with it before holiday madness overtakes you. Contact me for details.

I'm taking orders but don't even quite have my pricing done. Here are some price points and you get a 10% discount if you buy now. You also, of course, get a free upgrade to the final release of 7.0. And I'm putting import scripts so that you'll be able to easily move your data from one Beta to another if you like and to the final very easily.

Prices: $795 single-user, $1295 4-user, $1995 10-user, $2995 20-user. Between these points, you can add users for a fixed price per user and price per user gradually drops as you go up in price.

I'm here to answer your questions by phone, by email, by fax...

I am VERY excited about Studio Manager 7. I am in love with FileMaker 7. Rock and Roll!

Studio Manager for FileMaker 7 close

Just so you don't think I'm keeping something from you. I want you to know the Beta release of Studio Manager for FileMaker 7 is near. Hoping for a release towards the end of next week. We've got the vast majority of it done. Now, we are in the checklist, double-check, testing and polishing mode. We're going through every table, layout and button and fine-tuning the scripting and standard accounts and privileges so you don't have to start from scratch with that. Back to work...

eMacs Make Great FM7 Servers

Today you can buy a brand new 1.25 Ghz G4 eMac for $799 list or less if you shop. The speed comes in handy especially if you are using FileMaker Server 7 because most of the processing happens on the server. There's a nice review over at MacWorld. I like this machine for FileMaker 7, in particular, because it:

• is fast
• is cheap
• doesn't waste your money on an expensive monitor
• is self-contained so can be put in a minimal space: corner or closet

Another option would be an *old* eMac running at 1 ghz or even 800 mhz. Depends on how many concurrent users you are expecting. If you are a small shop with 5 or 6 users, I would go with the 1 ghz.

If you don't need the FileMaker Server software, these are still great little machines as dedicated FileMaker application servers running plain old FileMaker in small installations.

I like lcd displays for human beings who work in front of them all day because they don't radiate you like CRTs. But servers tend to just sit there without a user the vast majority of the time, so the CRT doesn't hurt you.

If you are a bigger firm with more than 10 concurrent users, you might want to look into a G5 box of some kind.

Don't forget to add at least a 512 mb RAM upgrade (not from Apple) to make this baby sing. You can get one for less than $100. As I write, one of my favorites, Other World Computing, has this RAM for $89.95.