OK, I give

I searched high and low last night for a Contact Manager for Linux on the order of Act or Goldmine.

Nothing.

Everything I found was either an outlook wannabe, a web based CRM system, or an overly complicated and high priced psudo CRM. Nothing at all like ACT or Goldmine.

These two companies have found the middle ground of sales management tools quite nicely, and they need to address the emerging Linux market.

I have been an ACT user since the olden days, DOS based 1.0 or 2.0. Back when they had user groups, and the owners/developers would actually come out and attend them. I can't remember the guy's names, but there were two of them. I had a business integrating Act with a couple of other products and sold it to Realtors as a peak-performance package.

Nothing could beat Act, it was small, fast, and efficient. It made use of hot-keys that are still in use today. There was nothing cooler than getting a call, hitting "F5" (I think) to search on a name and popping up a record, hitting "F9" to see the notes, and hitting "F4" for your calendar faster than it took for the customer to finish their first sentence. It was seamless.

Now, all these programs are road hogs. We use Goldmine here, we have a site licence, and I hate the product. It's way too much for the average sales guy, and it's quirky, and the support sucks. It's like the old days of SBT accounting - anyone remember that?

They had a vast array of accounting products from AR, AP to GL. They were written on the dBase engine. Once they sold it to you, they more or less directed you to their army of "certified consultants" to actually make use of it, and to support it. Goldmine has gotten that way. Unless you want to wade through the mounds of "almost answers" on their website, you need to contact a "certified goldmine consultant". "F" that.

I want Act for Linux, and I WANT IT NOW!!! :)

Another thing.. There is no phrase that make my hair stand up on my neck more than "PC Wizard" or "Guru". God, I hate that. Whenever I hear it, it conjours up images of a really fat guy, greying with a long beard driving a crappy little Ford Fiesta with the plates "WIZARD".

Pleeeeeeeeaaaseee..... Computers are simply not that difficult.