A Letter From the President

Our focus in August is IPM Classic.  IPM Classic enters general release August 1. Yee-haw. Hoorah, mostly.

I qualify the cheer because I know what a general release really means. After *ahem*  a few years of development, I have a fairly good sense of just what rubbish the beta testing period is.  No matter how long it is, you can only catch a) the stuff you see, and b) the major 'deal breaker' issues until people start using it every day under real life conditions.  Case in point is the recent iPhone that doesn't work in certain  positions, or Windows Vista that was in beta forever and still was a dog. 

Closer to home, IPM 10 wouldn't be anywhere near as stable as it is if it weren't for all the users who've suffered through it's first year of life. Recently, Sherry Osborne and Nancy Wargo have both really stood out as exceptional informants, giving us just what we need to fix nagging bugs and add pretty darn cool enhancements.

IPM Classic is a different story from the start, however.  IPM 10 is a new program from the ground up, where IPM Classic is about 90% IPM 2007. There really isn't that much new to review. We do expect this to be a comparatively painless release (Famous last words!) 

And IPM Classic will be a huge boon for offices with a couple new 64-bit PCs and a bunch of older stations. I'm very confident that Classic will start on those 64-bit PCs and migrate all over the office.

Next, tutorials and webinars...no more new products for a while.  Imagine being a single parent to a new-born and a year old.  That will definitely keep me too busy for any big, new products for a while. Really. I promise. At least until I lose the baby weight....

Yours,

William J Bennett
President