Patricia Kirkland wrote:
" Argus is recomennding an upgrade to their new Open Edition product, at
considerable expense."

I suspect that Questor is suggesting that you upgrade to their "Open
Insight" based product. Open Insight is a product of Revelation Technology.
It is a great database for museum applications. An unfortunate fact of
software life that often to stay current with a product, one must purchase
an upgrade because a vendor can't or won't devote resources to maintaining
older versions.

Regarding Argus for Windows (tm). When I last checked, Questor had used a
version of Open Insight that has been replaced with an upgrade. Questor had
not taken advantage of Revelation Technology's enhancements and had not
upgraded the version of OI upon which Argus is based. My impression is that
they are devoting much of their development energy into a new
product--Pluto. Traditionally, when a developer replaces a platform, they
taper off support of the old one. Users are expected to upgrade to the new
platform and usually have to pay for the upgrade.

There are other OI based products on the market. Ones that use current
versions of OI and ones that are actively supported by the
developer/vendor. Vernon Systems COLLECTION comes to mind. They have a
North American Agent. Please contact me, off list, for details.

You also wrote:
"Can anyone recommend a good, relativly inexpensive software package for
IBM machines?"

Inexpensive really is a relative term. :-)  My friend at SAP thinks any
database package priced at under US$50,000 isn't worth selling. Seriously,
have you contacted CHIN or the Museum Computer Network for their
publications that review/compare museum specific database applications? You
might also contact the Campbell Center for Historic Preservation Studies
regarding their class "Computer Software for Collections Management" taught
by Diane Zorich. Call Mary Lee at (815)244-1173

Gutenkauf
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