Comparing Act to ms-access is very much like comparing an Accounting System
to Excel?
is certainly able to build and maintain a ledger of accounting
entries...but you have to in fact build the ledger in Excel..and it would be
work. Further, it would take a LARGE amount of work to build all that stuff
you need for accounting in Excel.
So, Excel is a general tool that lets you build all kinds of cool
spreadsheets.
The same applies to Act. Act is a contact manager..and not really a database
development system.
Ms-access is really much like Visual Basic, or c++. Ms-access is a
development tool in which you can create applications with. Act on the other
hand is a contact management system..and has all the features and things
that you need to "manage" contacts.
Ms-access has no features to manage a contact, and you have to build all of
these features. So, to have some customer tracking features...you would have
to design, building, and write program code to do this in ms-access. To get
all of the features of Act into ms-access would take a good deal of
developer time (after all..that is what Act is the result of.....a whole
bunch of developers adding features to manage contacts with).
The difference is kind like the difference between purchasing a car..and
building a car!
Ms-access is a set of tools that lets you build software. You can build an
accounting system, a purchase order system, or even a contact management
system with ms-access. In fact, you can dream up just about any idea for a
business software package..and then build that package with ms-access.
I'm a novice computer user.
Well, then unless you willing and able to become a software developer, and
spend rather large amount of your time, then I am not sure if ms-access is
for you. You likely would be better to stick with Act.
