[CALIBK12] Is Follett Destiny the only game in town?

[KZNadalin at aol.com]

Hi, Barbara and everyone,

I use Alexandria and Textbook Tracker and overall have been pleased.   
However, I'm running the software "Data Station" on an iMac G5, a pretty fast 
machine, with "Work Stations" on regular iMacs.   Most of the time, it works like a 
charm.   The iMac G5 is running OS 10.5 (Leopard), and the work stations are 
OS 10.4 (Tiger).   During textbook return week, I also fired up an older PC 
laptop running Windows XP as an additional work station.   It was slow but did 
the job.

I learned a couple of things:

1.   Run permissions on your Mac if you're using a Mac on a regular basis, at 
least once a week.   I usually go for the very beginning or very end of the 
day.

2.   The automatic import for student data is amazing; I get a data file from 
our student scheduling software that shows students and their classrooms for 
all periods of the day.   There are two fields I can customize for import, so 
I chose to make them periods 5 and 6, when I happen to have a lot of student 
workers available for such things as class deliveries of overdue book lists and 
overdue textbook lists.   The import literally takes less than five minutes 
and saves hours of time looking up records on students to contact them about 
fines and overdue books.

3.   If you're running Textbook Tracker as well as Alexandria, do yourself a 
HUGE favor between classes or large groups, and simply have your work station 
workers quit the program, quit it on the Data Station, and restart your 
machine.   This eliminated the (7!) crashes I experienced on the first day of 
textbook return.

4.   Companion Corp is very responsive most of the time.   However, last 
fall, I had to write a number of emails to get help, and finally sent one that 
said "5TH REQUEST - POSSIBLE CONTRACT VIOLATION" right in the email subject.   As 
my school had paid for unlimited tech support, I had a problem with not 
getting any answers.   I had to smile a bit when the president of the company wrote 
me back within the hour.   After that, I got extremely prompt email responses 
to all of my queries.   I don't know if this was by chance, or because of my 
"5TH REQUEST" email.

FWIW..
Best,
Karen



> I keep hearing rave reviews about Alexandria and Companion Corporation tech 
> support.  I do not share the same feelings about Alexandria and Companion.  
> We have had several issues with their software and the tech people have 
> simply told us "yes, that is a bug in the software, oh well..." .  Alexandria 
> crashes several times a day when my tech is trying to work in the cataloging 
> component.  Companion made a lot of promises when we bought the program but we 
> are not impressed...Barbara
> 
> 




**************
Get trade secrets for amazing burgers. Watch "Cooking with 
Tyler Florence" on AOL Food.
      (http://food.aol.com/tyler-florence?video=4?&
NCID=aolfod00030000000002)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.sjsu.edu/pipermail/calibk12/attachments/20080602/48fa9054/attachment.html