I have a online retail business and am working on always expanding my
customer database. I never really had an organized system on the PC
but now that I'm switching to Mac I've decided it's time to get a good
system.
With the PC I did do some simple stuff on Outlook and as well on
Quickbooks 2006. With the Mac I plan to upgrade to Quickbooks 2007
for Mac. This does a few things for me and for my PIM I'm looking at
either Entourage or using the Mail, iCal, Address Book programs. I
have a feeling this will help me some but I'm looking into what other
more advanced programs there are.
What I am looking for is something I can simply do a customer database
in. Basically what I mean is keep track of customers, what type of
products they order or are interested in, keeping track of customer
mailing lists for newsletters, create customer mailing labels, etc. I
posted on another board and was told about Filemaker and this
newsgroup. I only know a little about databases from Access which I
used in Windows and it seems complicated but I've heard Filemaker has
templates that would make it very easy and as well if I use Quickbooks
stay with Quickbooks for PC (in Parallels) and don't use the Mac
version.
Any suggestions for a good solution, hopefully for the Mac side but if
not I can run it on the PC Side under Parallels. Thanks in advance
for any help.

The first thing you should do is actually take a look at templates
available for download from FileMaker, such as the Business Productivity
Kit. Download the software trial and the template. You've got 30 days to
play with it.

Know that FileMaker is pretty universally cross-platform. With few
exceptions (certain features available to one platform or the other), a
solution designed on Mac can be used in exactly the same fashion on
Windows, and vice-versa. The software itself is platform-specific, but
the files are not, unless you use Advanced to build a runtime.

You might need Parallels for other apps, but not Filemaker. If you look
at the packaging, you'll note that the system requirements address both
Windows and Mac: both of them are on the CD (FM decided quite a while
ago that platform-specific packaging was a waste of money).

Matt

In article <u35rk2l5ejduv69vv83lrstchinsu4ac62 (AT) 4ax (DOT) com>,
MarkW <markwco (AT) RemoveNoSpamcomcast (DOT) net> wrote:

Matt

Just to be exact: FileMaker files are still cross-platform in a runtime.
They can still be developed and shared. The run-time exe and app however are
platform dependend. So that an exe will not run on OS and an app will not
run under windows.

Ursus

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