ButtonWare

This book is the User Guide for PC-File Version 7. This turned out to be the final version of PC-File published by ButtonWare. Outlook Software Corporation purchased ButtonWare and took over the "Jim Button" moniker in 1994.

After Jim Knopf (aka Jim Button) had a heart attack at the age of 49 in 1992, he retired. Although he retained ownership of the company through the version 7 product upgrade, he did not have as much to do with version 7 as with previous releases. I am not sure who the chief architect of PC-File Version 7 was. Credits are given equally to 29 people listed alphabetically on the Copyright page of the User Guide.

PC-File Version 7 is still a DOS-based product requiring MS-DOS or PC-DOS 3.0 or higher to run. It also requires a minimum of 450K RAM and 1.5MB of available hard disk drive storage.

The changes from Version 6.5 to 7 were mostly seen in the GUI interface. The upshot was that I never did convert from being a satisfied PC-File 5.01 user. The cosmetic changes did not appeal to me. The addition of a GUI interface made for software-bloat and sluggish performance. I saw no reason to change.

By this time in my programming career, my upgrade policy was guided by the principle, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." PC-File 5.01 was not "broke."… (meer)