From: Don Hinkle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
My wife works on a G4 iMac flatpanel. She uses Appleworks to manage a small nonprofit. The database contains hundreds of people who are members and make donations from year to year.
However, occasionally the database goes "wonky" and freezes and we have to forcequit. I'm saddened by this because I've trusted Apple to make sure appleworks works perfectly on a Mac...as it should.
And it does, but AppleWorks is kind of in need of an update (to put it mildly).
There are several possibilities as to why this is happening, but I assume you're doing the usual maintenance, keeping regular, multiple backups of this data, and have tried deleting the preferences, right?
Have you also explored the possibility that this isn't really a freeze? I assume (from your statement that you're on a G4 iMac) that you're running some version of OS X. I don't think I've seen a true "system freeze" on OS X in all the years I've had it, so for you to be making that claim tells me that something beyond Appleworks is the culprit. Maybe you're running a less-than-ideal version of OS X? Maybe you don't have enough real RAM to deal with such a large database, and the system is having trouble with the Virtual Memory? Do you have a fair amount of free space on the HD?
You might, the next time the system does this, just walk away for a while (like ten minutes) and come back to it to see if the system has "unfrozen." If so, then the problem may be in different areas, like the Font Preview feature that slows the machine down something awful. You might have a bad font issue, or perhaps you've exceeded some of Appleworks' 9-constrained limits (which are still there due to backward compatibility issues.
Well, if you believe your database is going to continue to grow ever larger, I'd certainly be considering a move to Filemaker or 4D at some point, but Appleworks should be able to handle things.But I'm starting to wonder if we can trust it and whether we need to seek out something else.
_Chas_
FL-MUG: central Florida's Macintosh User Group. Meetings: second Thursday of the month, 6-9pm, at the Orlando Science Center. http://www.flmug.org
-- The iMac List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and...
Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | - Epson Stylus Color 580 Printers - new at $69 | & CDRWs on Sale! |
Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html>
iMac List info: <http://lowendmac.com/imac/list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/imac-list%40mail.maclaunch.com/>
---------------------------------------------------------------
The Think Different Store
http://www.ThinkDifferentStore.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
