Dear ACCPAC Plus user:
Every month, we receive at least one or two calls from ACCPAC Plus
users whose ancient computer hardware has failed, they are unable to
access ACCPAC Plus and have lost their ability to conduct business,
produce invoices and don't know who owes them money.
They then find that the floppy disks they were depending on in case of disaster are unusable, either;
- they no longer actually have a disk drive
- if they do have a disk drive, it no longer functions
- the magnetic media is no longer readable (diskettes have a shelf life of about 10 years)
Then they realize that ACCPAC Plus being a DOS program cannot run on
anything later than Windows XP, which is no longer supported or
available, so they have to see if they can find a used computer with
Windows XP on it (prone to failure again).
Then they discover that even though their I.T. person or non-ACCPAC
computer consultant has assured them that they have backed up ACCPAC
Plus, critical or hidden files are missing and ACCPAC Plus cannot be
restored.
There is nowhere left to obtain replacement ACCPAC Plus installation
media. ACCPAC International discontinued ACCPAC Plus in 2006 and the
business was bought by Sage Software where no one today even knows what
ACCPAC Plus is. Sage's successor product no longer converts data from
ACCPAC Plus and no longer uses the name Accpac. Any consultant who
still remembers and works with ACCPAC Plus is legally precluded from
giving the software to end users.
The #1 cause of hardware failures for ACCPAC Plus users is the hard
disk. Current hard drives with much improved technology have a
Component Design Life of 5 years and an Annualized Failure Rate of less
than 0.8%. This means if your drive is 20 years old, there is at least
a 16% chance of it failing and probably much higher since it is much
older technology.
If you are going to keep using ACCPAC Plus, have someone who knows
ACCPAC Plus (like Micro Management Associates) back up your ACCPAC Plus
programs and data onto multiple backup media. Your I.T. person,
computer consultant or nephew does not know what files these are and
where to find them. You should also have this Plus-knowledgable
consultant perform an annual fire drill (test restore) to be sure that
ACCPAC Plus can be restored.
Also, be sure you know where you lice ACCPAC Plus data is and that is
being backed up DAILY. Keep in mind that an ACCPAC Plus database cannot
be properly backed up by most cloud file archiving backup systems.
If you suddenly lose access to ACCPAC Plus, you will have to
upgrade/migrate on an emergency basis (invariably at the worst possible
time) and not be able to budget in advance for the software, hardware
and implementation costs
We cannot recommend more strongly that if you are using ACCPAC Plus for
DOS, you should move to a supported, windows-based accounting system. Adagio accounting
will easily convert your ACCPAC Plus data and be familiar and easy to
learn for ACCPAC Plus users. Adagio has many, many improvements and new
features over ACCPAC Plus. Rolling out this Fall will be an integrated
Adagio Document Management module (Adagio DocStore). We will be happy to show you Adagio with no obligation and at no charge.
To see a comparison of ACCPAC Plus screens and reports to the same screens and reports in Adagio, go to:
www.mmanyc.com/adagio/pluscompare/compare.html
If you would like our help being sure everything you need to restore
ACCPAC Plus is backed up, please contact us at:
http://www.mmanyc.com/contact.htm
We can also
set up an offsite, cloud-based backup including a periodic data
integrity check on a subscription model.
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