Nine to Five Reports

[Alan Gayne]

On Saturday, May 31, 2003, at 11:52 AM, Dan Shafer wrote:

> However, I know that if the RunRev folks and E.R. talked and if there 
> were some funding available for the project (either through pre-sales, 
> or direct investment or whatever), it is at least possible that E.R. 
> and Michael would pick up that product again and look into porting it.
>
> If we're wrong -- if, in fact, the user base is big enough and 
> sufficiently interested in reporting mechanisms to create a modestly 
> profitable product -- I'd love to be able to convince E.R. to re-do 
> Reports for us. And I'd be happy to carry that ball forward if anyone 
> can convince me I'm wrong.

Dan

That would sure make MY world a lot nicer place.

As I recall, they used to get $299 for the full Reports 3.0 package and 
I would GLADLY pay such a price again for a fully implemented RunRev 
version, perhaps with a $50 per machine downloadable Reports Player 
which would allow networked users to work with (but not create or 
alter) already prepared report documents.

I also had a brief conversation on this subject with E.R. and Bob 
Greenberg at rpControl wherein I had also suggested that they try to 
cut a deal with the RunRev people.  I had made a similar suggestion to 
Kevin Miller at last Summer's MacWorld Expo in New York.

What I eventually heard was that the RunRev people felt that all of the 
features offered by Reports would ultimately be better implemented 
totally within the Revolution environment - "ultimately" seeming to be 
the operative term.

While I am reasonably sure this is quite possible, the RunRev folks do 
not seem to place the same importance on this feature set as do I, and 
as I strongly suspect do the many people who still use the HC/Reports 
package every day to run their business.

Perhaps you could coax that "major european auto maker" to front that 
small (to them at least) amount of money to E.R. and Michael to get the 
job done.  Imagine what a promotional coup it would for RunRev to be 
able to say that it was now THEIR product being so used on ANY 
platform.  Maybe that would be motivation enough for them to talk 
seriously with the Reports people.

Alan