Yule
I have a 'deal' with my laptop, which I bought via auction for school: if it holds out for the 3 years it takes me to graduate, I will set it free and install Linux on it (it's an IBM Thinkpad. Unfortunately, the blasted thing is trying to renege 6 months early. Bad sectors, disappearing files, no-loads, yadda yadda yadda for the past two days.
Luckily, the whole thing isn't hosed. One program that is hosed: MS Access. Which I abhor, but I kinda really need for my research. And I'll be darned if I'm going to pay over a hundred bucks for a program I'll only need for another 4-6 months.
So, two things:
Happy Christmas/Yule/Kwaanzaa/Boxing Day/Solstice. And happy 12 days of Christmas, and Orthodox Christmas. May your days be merry and bright (or dark and brooding, whichever you prefer).
and ...
Can anyone recommend a good, cheap database program? In 6 months, I hope to migrate to Filemaker for the Mac, but I need a program now to run on my Thinkpad. If I can import my existing Access file, that would be rich dark chocolate frosting on the cake ...
Comments
Apologies if duplicated. Try downloading OpenOffice from http://www.openoffice.org - It's free and includes a database program, spreadsheet, presentation program, and more. There are versions for both Windows and Linux. It claims to be MS Office compatible and I found that to be case when working with the word processor. I was collaborating with a MS Word user across the country. I must confess that I haven't actually used the database portion of openoffice, but your only cost is your download time. - Daniel
Posted by: Daniel Cornwall | December 26, 2003 11:13 AM
I had heard about this, but I had gotten it confused with StarOffice. Thank you very much for the link!
Posted by: misseli | December 26, 2003 11:52 AM
Another option is MySQL. Good news is it's free and open source. Bad news is that it's a little more work to set up, and while there are Windows clients available, it's really meant for Linux. But it's in widespread use on every platform imag'nable, is very stable, and lacks much of the annoyance factor of Access. -bdu
Posted by: Brian Underwood | December 26, 2003 12:54 PM