OK, I promise I won't rant too much, but I have to vent a little.

We recently bought a business that came with Maximizer 6.0, which holds all the customer data. In the four months we've been trying to use the program I can't even count the times it has crashed! The only way we can use the program is to get it up and running and NEVER turn it off or it will crash. Every time I back up the data it crashes. The only fix (if you can call it that) is a complete un-install/re-install. This is ridiculous! It is a small business with only two employees, only one of whom uses the program. No need for networking or any bells and whistles, just Contact info, Hotlist, Notes and Calendar.

As I said, I've freakin' had it!

At this point I have two questions:

Question One - Is there anyone in the Seattle, Washington area who I can talk to (or anyone willing to to talk to me by phone) who might have a solution? The previous owner maintains she had no trouble with it in 8 years of use.

Question Two - Can anyone recommend a different, simple, stable CRM program and tell me how I can transfer the Max data to it? I have Quickbooks Customer Manager v2, but I can't figure out how to import the info and I don't want to enter 900 customers manually.

Thanks for any help you might have.

We're using Max 7 and don't have the stability issues you describe. We used Max 6 before that, again without these stability issues. Given what you've said I wouldn't give up on Max, although I'd upgrade to 7 once you had 6 stable and likely avoid 8 until your'e sure it's all running very very smoothly. Bottom line is there's something wrong with your setup. You need a Max-savvy reseller, but the only ones I know of are here in Vancouver, Canada.

- R.

One thing I would try: Create a new empty dbase & txfr a subset of contacts into it & see how the stability is. Appears that you might have some dbase corruption & that might be an easy way around it. If the new dbase is OK, I would continue to txfr small subsets, i.e. 50/100 contacts, continually testing the performance.