In a message dated 11/8/99 11:47:40 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
[log in to unmask] writes:

<< But if you choose this programme, you
 have to know that you should make regularly archive backups of your work.>>

 You should do this with *every* program, actually, especially when upgrading 
your operating system (going from Windows '95 to '98, Mac OS 7 to 8, etc.). 
The software products developed by smaller companies (this includes all of 
the QDA software) don't have the benefit of the resources the larger 
companies can put into testing and re-testing the reliability of the software 
on various platforms and computer configurations.

We've only had one case where a user lost *all* data with HyperRESEARCH 1.65 
(a system crash apparently caused an "empty" study file to be written over 
the original study file) and there were no backups to fall back on. We've had 
a dozen or so incidences (over the course of several years, with a pool of 
1000+ regular users) where a HyperRESEARCH study file has become "corrupted" 
-- some of the information incomplete, or written out to the file in the 
incorrect order, rendering it meaningless to HyeprRESEARCH. In the majority 
of these cases we've been able to recover all of the data.

HyperRESEARCH 2.0, having been re-written from the ground up, may very well 
eliminate these occasional (infrequent but nevertheless annoying!) 
"corruption" problems. There were no reports of corrupted study files in the 
year-long betatesting.

But we still recommend, *strongly,* that our users keep daily backups of 
their data. Ideally, save the files to floppy disks with names that include 
the date in the name, so they end up with more than one backup (in a few 
cases a HyperRESEARCH 1.65 study was actually "corrupted" previously and 
additional work with it just further jumbled the data up -- when this happens 
the previous day's backup may still have the problem present).

Best regards,

Ann Dupuis
ResearchWare, Inc.
[log in to unmask]
http://www.researchware.com


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