What should we do about Vista?
Well, here's your opportunity to help decide what we should do about Blue Ribbon... should we update to version 2.6 so that it's compatible with Vista, or stay a bit longer on version 2.5 (which isn't)?
There are counties out there that have upgraded their office computers to Vista, and have left a "Blue Ribbon computer" set up somewhere, just so they can use it for that... and there are more and more counties who may be upgrading their machines. Is that a workable solution, or should we bite the bullet and change?
With the current economic challenges, I can't guarantee that we'll be changing to anything next fall, so that means this discussion has to be re-opened. I was pretty comfortable when I thought that in a year everyone would be transitioned to a new platform, one that was compatible with all computers. But now that there's a question about whether we can make that happen in that time frame, we need to revisit the plan.
There are still issues with version 2.6, although some things have been fixed. Keep the following things in mind as you respond to the blog:
- If we DO upgrade to 2.6, it's every county, every computer during the same time frame. There's no opt-outs.
- There is a possibility of corrupted data during the upgrade (we'll have backups of your original data, so should be able to mitigate that, although it'll be annoying and messy)
- The grade & years in 4-H do not increment on the re-enrollment forms
- Older printers don't work very well, and the mailing labels are sometimes unpredictable
- There were serious problems with the export process, though I have not figured out whether those were corrected or not.
- Print Data files (Lit By Project) is not working right at all
- ES237 duplicates may not be calculating correctly, and the ES237 report may be terminally unbalanced whether you have the data correct or not.
- We have terminated our Martech support contract, so will not be receiving further updates and/or support from the company. We're on our own with this.
I don't mean to sound totally negative, but wanted to be brutally honest with you about what we're trading for what. Let's hear some input from counties that have left a Blue Ribbon computer, as well as the rest of you. What do you see as a sustainable solution for the next 18-24 months? At some point, we will change systems--we just have to be careful stewards of our financial resources at this point, and that likely means postponing this purchase.
THANKS for responding to the blog!!