NICK COLLINGRIDGE  Update on my recent problem report - the crashing problem I was experiencing does seem to have been fixed now, even though it was not specifically mentioned in the release notes. As of 8.16, SOHONotes has been very stable again and I am very happy with it once more.

I have avoided the problem with the backup issue by setting it to not backup at application launch and set a new location for the backup which is present on the network, so I don't know if this problem has been fixed or not - I doubt whether it will be acknowledged in the release notes if they do fix it so I would recommend avoiding the problem.  
(Version 8.17)

NICK COLLINGRIDGE  This is a pretty good product, but take a look at SOHO Notes as well, which has an astounding range of functionality.  
(Version 2.0)

NICK COLLINGRIDGE  I have to modify my previous comments somewhat, as the last two versions of this product have been rather unstable, crashing once a day on average. The crash seems to always be in a call to libobjc.A.dylib - objc_msgSend_fixup with a selector name of endProgressWindow. I'm surprised that they haven't fixed this yet as it has been present in both 8.14 and 8.15 at least.

Also the SOHONotesService module (which is responsible for the menu bar and shortcut facilities) is crashing at a similar frequency with a call to libobj.A.dylib of objc_msgSend.

There's no point emailing tech support as all you get is a reply saying they are totally bogged down.

I still think this is a great product, but I do hope they quickly get on top of its current instability. I hasten to add that no other app on my system is displaying any instability at all, so I am sure this is not a system-wide problem.

One other problem to beware of is if you set the backup location to be on a network volume and set the application to backup on launch; and then that volume becomes unavailable on the network, you will get into a deadlock that can only be fixed by making the volume available again.  
(Version 8.15)

NICK COLLINGRIDGE  Seems to work fine, but one thing I find rather disconcerting is that there isn't a pref pane for it. This means that you don't know that it's been installed, there's no straightforward place to go to look at which version number is installed, and there's no user interface in an obvious place to do things like check for updates etc.

For something which installs itself quite deeply into the OS (needing a restart after installation), I think this is wrong behaviour. It's all a bit mickey-mouse in this respect (and quite unlike their own Paragon NTFS driver which does have a pref pane), but as I said before it seems to work fine in every functional respect.  
(Version 82)

NICK COLLINGRIDGE  Just doesn't work for me, I'm afraid - 10.6.2, iMac 27. It appears in the Desktop & Screen Saver prefs pane, and when you click Options... a panel appears with all the options which shows that it is version 3.1.0, but nothing happens in the black preview panel, and when you click Test again nothing happens...  
(Version 3.1.0)

NICK COLLINGRIDGE  Thanks to some reviews below I have discovered Burn, which means that never again will I have to use Toast or struggle with the hassles of dealing with Roxio. They are clearly so focused on cynically making as much profit as possible from the brand that they can't be bothered to spend any money on making the product any good.

They truly are the Ryanair of the Macintosh marketplace - abuse the customers and treat them like **** and just count the shekels as they come rolling in. Maybe one day the marketplace will do what it should do and reject them and their lousy product, but sadly I think it will take a long time before they feel the need to respond.

Whatever happened to people taking a pride in their job and striving to do the best they can?  
(Version 10.0.5)

NICK COLLINGRIDGE  I do get a bit depressed sometimes at how much people love to gang up on anyone or anything that is vulnerable. Why can't we remember that very rarely are things all good or all bad? My experiences with software and support from many companies have been terrible but for some reason Chronos never seem to get the positive credit they deserve for their products.

Take SOHO Notes for example - I've looked at all of the competition and none of them even come close. It is as completely featured as you could want and a very ambitious (and successful) product. But people keep on harping on about the flaws without much mention of the positives.

It is not perfect yet, but it doesn't fall far short. Furthermore new versions are coming out every few days at the moment which, for me at least, have fixed all of my problems.

I do entirely accept that their support should be better, but it is a big challenge for small companies to get the balance right between the cost of providing good responsive support and the time involved in developing the product to make it better in order that any flaws get fixed as soon as possible. And it all has to be taken in context. We are talking about a thoroughly excellent product here, but that factor seems to get lost in the noise.

I have no involvement with the company whatsoever except as a customer and someone who has worked with their products over the years. You will find an earlier comment from me where I acknowledge how terrible their products used to be in terms of robustness, but I am very happy with SOHO Notes now and use it extensively. Give it a go - Chronos deserve for it to be a big hit because of its excellence.  
(Version 8.12)

NICK COLLINGRIDGE  This just may be the final straw for me - Filemaker is the MOST frustrating product to work with. Now it's a problem with activation - I have just migrated across to a new 27" iMac and in every other respect this has been a pretty straightforward process. However when I try to launch Filemaker Pro I get a dialog requiring me to activate. When I do it first of all takes twenty or so minutes before a response comes back from the activation server, and this tells me that I need to deactivate my copy on another computer - presumably the one I've just migrated from. Fair enough, except that I don't know why it takes so long to get a response on this when I obviously want to be able to use the software as soon as possible.

So anyway I go to the old system, connect it up and then boot it up. Launching Filemaker Pro and guess what - I get a dialog telling me I need to activate it! And no way of getting any further at this point - if I click the "Activate Later" button I get a dialog that says "A trial version of FMP has been used on this computer. Contact FileMaker or your reseller to purchase FileMaker Pro. If you receive this message after selecting Activate Later, then please activate your licensed copy of FileMaker Pro." This dialog also appears on the new system, even though that one DEFINITELY has never had a demo copy installed.

So that's it - I'm screwed and because this is a weekend I have no way of getting any further because their licensing team is not available out of working hours. So all my data that is in FMP is unuseable and inaccessible on either of these systems. This is pathetic in my view - its shouldn't be possible to be so locked out of your data.

I don't know what's gone wrong - I am a totally law-abiding purchaser of the product and yet I am unable to use it.  
(Version 10.0v3)

NICK COLLINGRIDGE  Seems to be something broken here. When I try and play a station the progress wheel spins round for a while and then just stops. If I switch to the Finder there is a window in the background with the title "Adobe Flash Player security", and some text in it referring to the widget but with no buttons or indeed any other way of interacting with the dialog. Needless to say I don't get to hear anything either!  
(Version 4.11)

NICK COLLINGRIDGE  Thanks for clarifying the fact that it is now 64-bit. I will be buying a copy of the new version as a result. Any chance of the option to disable the caps lock key?  
(Version 4.1)

NICK COLLINGRIDGE  My experience with Snow Leopard has been that the vast majority of apps have no problem at all. A small few have one or two minor problems, but they have all been quickly updated to address the problems. Any work needed would probably be very minor in nature and shouldn't represent much of a problem for a company with the presumed resources of FMI - if they cared at all. It seems very cynical to me that they should not address the problems, expecting people to pay for an expensive upgrade to FMP 10 when there are few if any significant enhancements to really justify the cost of the upgrade.

Whilst Snow Leopard does introduce some new technologies like Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL, these are enhancements and don't affect applications which don't need or want to use them. As always, SL will have tightened up some parts of the API, fixed some bugs, and introduced some new bugs. All of these should be easily addressed by FMI in the normal way (as with any new system update) with a small amount of resource. That they choose not to do so is indicative of their attitude to their users, which is the point I was trying to make.  
(Version 10.0v3)

NICK COLLINGRIDGE  It's all very well giving Filemaker such praise, but the facts remain that they are pathetic at supporting older versions - FMP9 is already unreliable in my experience on Snow Leopard after being rock-solid on Leopard - and the upgrade cost to fix a simple problem like this is prohibitive, particularly when there are no really significant new features. It makes the product one which people use grudgingly, as you can tell very well from the reviews below, and that's not good for a company which needs loyalty from their users. My recipe would be to support older products for a bit longer than they do, reduce the upgrade costs to a more reasonable level, and add more features to "major version upgrades". They are trying to force people to upgrade through their current policies and this will just build resentment and people jumping ship as soon as they can for alternatives. Not wise for the long term...  
(Version 10.0v3)

NICK COLLINGRIDGE  Great, and very handy, but a couple of points:

1. I assume that it still isn't complied as a 64-bit pref pane because if it was this would have been mentioned as a feature for 4.0. It would be good if this could be done so that it were not necessary to re-open preferences every time you go to the settings. I would happily pay for the new version if this were the case!

2. Would it be great to have an option to disable the caps lock altogether, which could maybe be implemented by immediately switching off the caps lock if it is activated, depending on what hooks there are available.  
(Version 4.0)

NICK COLLINGRIDGE  I know that it's fashionable to knock Chronos, and I also know from bitter experience that in the past most of that criticism has been justified. However I have to say that SOHO Notes is an immense improvement on their previous products.

I have been searching for a notes application to replace my much-loved copy of NotePad Deluxe (not Intel native and has some problems with SL) for a while now, and of all of them out there (and there are quite a few) SOHO Notes is the best by quite a long way. The UI is excellent, the feature set is extremely comprehensive, it's fast, and best of all the app itself is very stable.

I have had minor problems; FlashNote quits on occasion and an issue with form notes which are encrypted losing their data, but other than that it really is excellent. It's not perfect (I've got a long list of suggestions!) but it is better than any other notes app at present that I have looked at.

Just for the record - this version does not use OpenBase but Apple's CoreData, which is fast and stable. Also there is a lot of detailed info on their blog as to why the iPhone app, NoteLife, is not out yet, and it really doesn't look like it's Chronos' fault but down to Apple's cumbersome review process. Take a look at http://www.chronosnet.com/blog/index.html.   
(Version 8.08)