Crystal reports 8.5

[Chrismarworth]

Does anybody know where I can buy this program from? I contacted businessobject through their site a cople of times, but they have not replied.

Thanks for any help.

Chris

[wjcampbe]

It is still available from people on ebay at very attractive prices (you have to carry out the usual checks). I also found about 10 other sources in a quick google search.

Unfortunately, it is getting rarer. BO do have an online purchase option available.

[Chrismarworth]

Thank you Bill,

BO only seem to have versions 9 and 10 available. I had not thought of ebay but now I have looked there is a copy on there now.

Thanks for your help

Chris

[Jan]

To buy it from Business Objects you have to buy the latest version and then apply for a downgrade. You also have to buy the professsional or developer version in order to be able to apply for a downgrade. Once you have downgraded, you end up with an unsupported piece of software that you cannot upgrade - not the best of deals in my opinion.

You seem to be able to buy it here :

http://www.pyramid.com/Product.aspx?StockCode=481168

Regards,

[fleetwood]

Enquiries about Crystal reports seem to crop up fairly often, so I have a couple of questions for the Actinic bods about this:

1) Can Actinic give a firm commitment as to whether or not they intend to continue with version 8.5 for the foreseeable future. I'd hate to splash out on one of these rare beasts, only to find Actinic 8/9/10 has moved on to one of the newer Crystal reports versions.

2) Is there any way of Actinic licensing this product, so that they can supply us with a cut down version at a nice cut down price?
I'd guess that most of us simply want it to do some simple tweaks to our reports, and create new simple reports, rather than anything fancy.
Quite often you can obtain an older version of software free via a computer mag mount. Software developers seem happy to do this on the premise that once you've tried it, you may want to upgrade to the latest version at some point.

Maybe Actinic could make an approach to obtaining a cheap reseller licence on this now 'old' piece of software, to provide to those of us that want it at a knock down price.

Just a thought...

Martin

[Jan]

'2) Is there any way of Actinic licensing this product, so that they can supply us with a cut down version at a nice cut down price?

I looked at doing this a while ago but the licensing model offered by Business Objects (who provide crystal reports) means that is costs almost the same to sell a license for the distributable designer (which is the simple thingy that lets you edit your reports) as it does to sell the full product.

Regards,

[cbarling]

We haven't upgraded from Crystal 8.5 because of the amount of work we would have to do for no user benefit.

Our eventual goal is to be able to change reports from within Actinic. Unfortunately, this isn't happening in v8 and we're also not planning a change of Crystal report version either.

So it's safe to buy Crystal 8.5 for the medium future.

Chris

[fleetwood]

Thanks Jan & Chris

[GuyB]

Crystal Reports 8.5

I am new to Actinic, we purchased it in June this year. I too am very disappointed to find that a product such as this only works with an unsupported product like Crystal 8.5.
When is this going to change? I simply cannot be expected to pay such a lot for a piece of software to make our invoices look better!!, after all the standard invoice prints fields like how the customer heard about us. I'm afraid its just not good enough Actinic. MS Visual Studio gives you a Crystal Reports module and I'd much rather pay for that . Guy

[wjcampbe]

Guy,

It is in appreciation of your point of view that forum members such as Mole End (jan) offer a one time document design service for a miniscule fraction of the cost of the Crystal Software.

[Kermy]

I have always found the lack of an invoice editing feature astonishing. While Mole End provide an editing service, the fact that an 'out-of-the-box' e-commerce solution - which heavily emphasises customisation as a strong-point - won't allow you to change even the wording on your company invoice is surely a huge issue.

Very disapointed - and surprised - that there are no developments in this regard with v8.

[jont]

I have always found the lack of an invoice editing feature astonishing.

Too true - which is why I have to invoice outside of Actinic (adding to the overall process)

[cbarling]

I can't disagree with the points that are made.

What I can do is offer an explanation - little comfort I know - but it does provide some background context.

We originally went with Crystal reports as it provided flexible report writing with no run-time distribution cost. This wasn't ideal, as anyone wanting to make a change had to purchase Crystal, but it was a reasonable compromise.

Unfortunately, Crystal made some major changes after 8.5. This meant that to continue using the latest Crystal we had to do loads of re-work. As our eventual objective is to provide the ability to freely change report layouts not using Crystal, this re-work didn't seem to be worth it.

Unfortunately, we haven't yet been able to do the work to provide this free editing capability yet, although v8 should provide the technical platform on which we can build this.

So apologies again. We are aware of the problem, and we do have a plan to address it. Unfortunately not immediately.

Chris

[jont]

Thanks for the info Chris

[GuyB]

Hi All,
Thanks for all your comments, doesn't Microsoft have a reporting tool now? or just VB reports would do me - so come on Actinic get some plans in the pipeline to get this sorted. The cost of ownership of Actinic goes up it you have to pay for software or simple/essential changes to use the product.
Regards Guy