GemX - missing in action

[rgdot]

Haven't upgraded yet and may not but as far as I can tell (not that there are any new screenshots that I can find) almost everything new is in the back end. My impression, without having used it, is did this require a version bump to 4?

[Darwin]

Good point, rgdot... As you note , the GUI isn't really changed very much, there are no new features (though a bunch of new stuff is promised for v.4.x). Upgrades are pretty cheap - $19.95. However, as I noted, I don't think I'll jump - I'm happy with my current workflow.

I can report, though, that I found the beta to be very stable and it worked well under Win 7 64-bit.

[Dormouse]

My impression, without having used it, is did this require a version bump to 4?

-rgdot (October 30, 2010, 01:11 PM)

Well, if a complete rewrite of the majority of the code does not justify a major version upgrade, then what does?

Certainly v4 is functionally virtually identical to v3 (& v3 works find on W7 x64 for me). Equally certainly, no-one has to upgrade. At some stage of v4, there may be some new features that you do want to upgrade for - and you can do it then. But I'm not sure how they would choose exactly which new features would justify a version upgrade; it seems easier to me to do what they have done and make it a major version change now, and leave users to decide if and when to upgrade. I don't think they could defer a new version any longer without losing even more users, so it is good that it is out there. And the upgrade price is very reasonable.

[Josh]

Dormouse: While I agree that a complete rewrite can, and in most cases does, justify a major upgrade...in the eyes of the consumer if nothing changes visually or functionally, then it does not. Most consumers, I say most because like us at DC there are exceptions, expect a visual impact when going from V.X to V.Y. My father once asked me why he should upgrade from diskkeeper 8 to 9 back in the day (before I knew he was buying this and wasting his money) because very little had changed visually. He didn't see what was new during his trial upgrade.

[Dormouse]

in the eyes of the consumer if nothing changes visually or functionally, then it does not.

-Josh (October 31, 2010, 08:50 AM)

But surely that is OK? Consumer does not think it is worth upgrading (quite understandably atm) and so does not upgrade.

But GemX are saying that they anticipate frequent updates to v4. This means it will be very hard to find a point at which the extra features justify the upgrade unless they artificially delay releasing new versions. This is the first real upgrade for quite a few years. I decided to upgrade this time, partly to show some support and trust and partly to support the reasonable upgrade pricing. We'll see if it was worth it some time, but there's nothing that makes it compelling now - but I still understand why it's an appropriate point to say it is a major version change.

[Darwin]

Well, what has changed is that Windows 7 is fully supported - v.3 would not save my databases from one system start to the next. This was a documented problem for many users. The underlying sourcecode has also been extensively re-written and the groundwork laid to add a bunch of features.

Here's the changelog for v.4:

17 October 2010 - do-Organizer version 4.0.6 released (major version)
Changes

•To the user, there doesn't "appear" to be many changes as all the major work has been "under the hood". But as you may appreciate, getting solid foundations laid is very important.
•A great deal of the database engine has changed in version 4. Taking over a year of development and testing , the engine is now faster than ever whilst providing a solid data storage platform. If sure you will notice the difference in speed.
•Improved Unicode recognition, especially where there are rich formatted notes. You will notice you can paste Arabic and a lot of other language text directly into do-Organizer 4 now.
•New SQL functions have been added to allow the advanced data query operators. Almost anything can be extraced and manipulated using the new functions. This gives great flexibility when the built-in Reports or List Grids fail to deliver exactly what you need.
•UI (User Interface) has been tweaked and corrected in a lot of places. There's quite a lot of hidden windows and forms so this is an ongoing development. However, our goal is not to change the UI too much so the learning curve remains steady and easy.
•Future protocols. Work has been done to enable the mailer, browser and other data streams to recognise some of the newer Internet protocols. This will diversify towards HTML5 and Android.

and what's coming up:

•Social and Virtual World connectivity, in particular, Second Life, OpenSim grids, FaceBook, Twitter and there will be a direct dedicated connection to our own 3d virtual world. More details on this is expected in the coming month or so.
•Scheduling integration of Calendar/Tasks/Resource. Improved relationships with contacts for easier and better scheduling based on frequency and some automatic virtual linking mechanisms.
•Finance and transactions will be enhanced for those businesses running virtual and website business. Improved import and customer tracking for purchases of virtual world goods. This will also work the other way around for customers who wish to track expenses throughout their social communications and virtual purchases to websites and other membership areas.
•Photo Gallery organization. This will be a unique ability to manage multiple images easier especially for photographs and easier faster ways to upload to places like Flickr.
•Journals Blogging will be enhanced to better integrate and manage blog articles with links to blog distribution.
•Scribe will be enhanced to provide better Unicode support and also for authors of book publications to store complete chapters with ease. The main concentration with be towards writers of novels.
•Linx will be upgraded to use HTML5 and latest CSS. This means more accurate web pages rendered in the doBrowser as well as in the Mailer section and Javascript will be a whole lot faster. The proposed engine for use will be the same one used in the Google Chrome browser.
•do-Organizer 4 Enterprise will be a spin-off for those who wish to setup a large scale database. The database engine in use wil be MySQL, thereby allowing a userbase of literally thousands of connections. As this MySQL database can be hosted on your Linux servers, the link between web page business directly to the do4 database would be a lot easier, especially for managing customers and products.

Overall, I *hope* this signals good things for the future from gemX. It's been, what, three years since I started this thread? I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and watch development. I'm not really interested in the software anymore- for the reasons noted above - but am watching development with interest.

Ah... Dormouse beat me to posting! As always, more eloquent (and economical with his words) than I!

[Dormouse]

Strangely, given the timegap, Do-organizer (sort of via HarmonyPIM) is now reborn as doogiePIM.
Newly rewritten (again!) and with a new developer who acquired the previous code, customer database etc. Cheap(ish) conversion/upgrade for previous customers.
Looks very similar atm. Google sync is apparently in development, as is an Android app. I don't like the Document element as much.
Looking at it, I can see that I might (still!) use it for some things, if it works reliably & if there is Google sync.
Bitespire.com. Has a forum.

[Darwin]

Wow - six years since my last post here and the software has been through (at least) two new developers and two name changes. As I noted in 2010, I've long since lost interest in the software, but I wish the developer luck.

[Dormouse]

Very impressed to see doogiePIM as one of the Giveaway prizes.
Thought I'd try it out again. Remains very similar, possibly a bit smoother. Still intending Google sync and an Android version, but there seem to have been fairly frequent updates. Now on version 2.

I'll give it a spin, since I was a frequent user of the Gemx original (albeit rather on and off and never fully committed). Lack of Android likely to be a major issue for me. I still like the range of features on a single database: makes it much more efficient if you use a lot of them on a single project.

So far, I like the Document word count - very easy to access with common readability stats. But barely played with it yet. Will probably buy to show some support since I'm happy to see it still going when so many others have gone. And it has a forum! - though could do with more users and posts.