I remember starting way back when -- I believe I was one of the first -- and our programs would crash with no warning about four to eight times per day. At that time, you HAD to run Amazing Utilities and ALL AC programs had to be shut down. Well, this was a nightmare given there was some type of leak and, even if AC did not appear to be running, it could be running in the background. You had to close it in task manager. To make matters worse, a couple of XP Programs in the back on a non-domain network had Fast User Switching. So, here we were, four to eight times a day, completely stopping with three or four of us running to each machine to make sure AC was not running, looking between the different users on the XP Pro faster user switching machines and finally going to the Amazing Utilities on the server and fixing the problem. Of course, a good many of those times, it would say AC was still running. So, someone's AC could crash in room 1, and you would be in room 6 and have no idea until your AC froze (they all crashed due to the first one) or you heard the alarm that everyone needed to get out of AC, while Bert manned the server and the nurses were running around turning the ACs off. The patients thought we were crazy, and my partner at the time who has NO patience was already switching to paper progress notes and writing out scripts on paper pads. AARRGGHH!! This went on for weeks with almost daily calls to Jon who told me that there were three practices like this. I have no idea how I continued to keep my impatient partner to hang in there. I tried everything and finally put an upgraded pro version of Access on the server (which, of course, should not have made a difference) and it never crashed again. So, see, it could be much worse.
Interesting, I too had trouble with AC 1.X crashing several times a day. Jon said it happened only to a few people, he told you 3. Interesting that we are both Pediatricians. I solved it with V2 but my associate never had enough confidence to continue using it. She later left.
V4 has been rock solid in my office. I did have some connection problems that I tracked down to a bad NIC (ethernet) card on the main computer. This caused havoc for about a month, but was NOT AC's fault. It has been very stable otherwise, occasionally it will still burp and not find the connection to the main but never crashed for me.
Boy, I wish AC ran on Macs.
Even Jon seems to prefer Macs, almost surprising he used PCs to write the program. They are much more stable because the code and the hardware are more tightly controlled. You do pay a price for tight control, despite what Steve Jobs would like you to believe. I too prefer Macs.
