Rating: 
Summary: ACT! 6.0 Is A Great Improvement
Review: I am happy to see ACT! 6.0! I am also grateful to see that the folks at ACT! listened to me and improved their e-mail client in this new release. Their new e-mail client seems to work as well as Outlook, but now I don't ever have to leave the program, which is a huge plus. I also really like the library tab and I have been able to use the ACT! Quick Books link to tie my ACT! in with my Quick Book Pro.I am a huge fan! Keep up the good work ACT!
Rating:
Summary: ACT! 6.0 - Review
Review: I disagree with the bad reviews on ACT! 6.0. I think ACT! 6.0 is a phenomenal product and it has been my lifeline since version 2.0. In the past my biggest complaint about ACT! was the e-mail client. In the past it wasn't real user friendly like the rest of ACT! but with ACT! 6.0 the e-mail client has caught up with the core competency and now I can stay within the program at all times. I can also generate simple invoices and quotes to my customers through the new library tab, which is one of my favorite new features. I think ACT! 6.0 is a solid upgrade from ACT! 2000 and it is worth the [$$] bucks just for the e-mail portion and I would pay another [$$] for the library tab... In my opinion, the people writing bad reviews on ACT! 6.0 don't use it to its full capabilities and therefore they do not recognize the improvements. Sincerely, Satisfied ACT! Customer for 10 years!
Rating:
Summary: Switched to ACT! 6.0
Review: I have been a Goldmine user for the last four years, but after downloading the free trial version of ACT! 6.0 from their web site, I decided to switch. ACT! 6.0 has a much nicer graphical interface and more enriched features than previous releases. ACT! 6.0 integrated nicely with my outlook XP so that I am able to compose and read messages that are sent with Outlook from within the ACT! console. This is a nice feature because email retrieved by ACT! this way can be scanned by my anti-virus software. The library tab is a nice added feature and it allows you to associate several media type files with your contact. Data conversion for me was quick. I found it fairly easy to set up custom field and reports within ACT. I would recomend this product strongly to anyone who is in the market for contact software. If you are already an Outlook user, this product is particular nice because of its integration with that program.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I switched from a Mac as my main platform a couple of years ago, and had to abandon InTouch and NowContact. For a while I used an Excel spreadsheet and AOL's address book, but decided to buy ACT as it seemed to be the Windows leader. I use a laptop and desktop, and have been disappointed by the cumbersome interface, data synchronization, need for two copies of Act for two computers (when I obviously never use both at the same time - note Intuit's response to this issue), and lack of integration with AOl mail. My guess is that I will never fully implement ACT.
Rating: 
Summary: Upgrade only if you need the new email capabilities
Review: I upgraded from ACT 2000 because I needed to be able to send out email mailings to my customers in HTML. ACT 6 does do that pretty well, so I'm pleased I went ahead with the upgrade. But without doubt Interact has introduced a lot of bugs into the product -- I guess they lost most of the programmers who knew the program when they bought ACT from Symantec. The email program itself is buggy and will only work for me if I have Outlook running as well. Also, very frustrating, is that the wordprocessor driver crashes after one use, so I can only create one document at a time then I have to reboot. Their support site doesn't seem to have a solution for this.
Apart from rewriting the email system, there is very little that's upgraded from ACT 2000, as far as I can tell.
Rating: 
Summary: Mail merge changes
Review: I work in public relations, and have been using ACT 2000 very successfully for a while to send out mail merge press releases. The new mail merge features in ACT 6.0 only allow graphical email documents to be sent out using a merge. A very large file (the last one page press release with nothing but text I sent was 6.37 MB) is attached to the document. Many newspapers I send information to are not even allowed to open mail that has attachments, and many will not accept mail that large. So the new version is useless to me. If there is a way around it, I can't find it, and of course ACT's support is legendarily non-existent. There is no free technical support at all, and their so-called knowledge base fails me most of the time.
Rating:
Summary: New Features Helpful but Very Unstable
Review: I'm a big ACT! fan as I've been using it for almost 10 years. I haven't come across anything that is as powerful for the price. I was initially excited to see some of the advertized features in version 6.0 because they speed up my work flow. But unfortunately, when I use the look-up and sorting features ACT crashes at least every other try. I'm using Windows NT and there are 4 other users sharing the database (and 1K contacts) but this is considered an acceptable operating environment for this program (and it's the same configuration as I had using 5.0). The feature allowing attachment of documents to a record is also useful but it has bugs, often locking up my computer or pausing for 1-2 minutes to open a simple Word document. If you're not in a rush, wait until version 6.1 or later is released in hopes that the bugs get worked out.
Rating: 
Summary: It's a lot better than ACT 2000
Review: I'm not an experienced ACT user, but recently have been converting to it. I'd been using ACT 2000, which I purchased a while ago, with Windows XP and Outlook. I was completely frustrated - the Outlook integration for email was awful and ACT was buggy with XP - constant crashes or freezes (and that's not common with XP). Now I'm on the free 30-day trial of 6.0 and it is a vast improvement. Email with Outlook works way better; it's actually usable! So that in itself is worth it to me. I just placed my order for the program. I haven't used enough of the other features to give it 5 stars, but it's worth the upgrade.
Rating:
Summary: My Experience with ACT
Review: I'v been using ACT for 2 years. No considerable complaints with ACT6 but when I upgraded to ACT 2005. It's too slow. Time-is-money and waisting time with it I wasting too much money. I'm out now. I'll better go to Terrasoft CRM or wait for Goldmine7.
Jack
Rating:
Summary: Been and ACT user for 8 years, but this is the pits
Review: I've been a faithful user of ACT since 1998. I've always found it intutive and an absolute must for my sales activities. I've been such a big proponent of ACT that I often recommend it during my company's sales consulting practice. I've attended several one day training courses from ACT approved training centers to improve my operating of the software.
I've always upgraded shortly after ACT has brought a new version to market. The changes have always been minimal, but you could always see the improvements from one version to the other and they always made sense. The improvements have made ACT easier to use and much easier to use with Outlook.
I decided to do the trial version of the newest ACT to see how I would like it......and I didn't.
What a disaster. The only positive point was that I kept my ACT 2004 as a seperate program and am I glad I did.
The new version of Act was slow, clunky, very unintutitive and hard to operate. I lost all ability to synch with Outlook. It is a disaster. I hope ACT will improve the system before jaming a new one down our throats. I bet I get an email once a week urging me to upgrade and how the price will go up if I don't. After the trial session I wouldn't upgrade if they gave it to me.
Stick with your older version of ACT until they get the major problems with the new version repaired.
Shame on you ACT for bringing a product to market that is vastly inferior to your older versions.
| 
