Question buying Access 2013?

[dromio]

Hello all, I'm a new member here and by way of introduction I'll ask a question which has probably been done to death here ... if so, please point me in the correct direction.

But, if not ...

I've been asked it write a database and I thought I'd do it in Access.

I'm going to be buying a new desktop which will probably run win8/10 (but that's still tbd) are there any known issues with A13 and win8?

So I'm looking to buy a new edition of Office with Access bundled. I want a CD/DVD not a download; I want it on my machine and I'd like to have it on at least 1 other machine, probably a laptop.

How much should I be paying and where should I go to buy it?

fwiw I've used a fair amount of fortran, VB, C, C++ and java over the years, but my sql experience is pretty limited.

Probably a fairly naive question, but your opinions would be appreciated.

TIA
Dromio

 

[CJ_London]

welcome to the forum!

Depends if this is a one off or not - if a oneoff, I would go for the same setup as your client otherwise you may have all sorts of issues with different versions.

If not, I would stick to 32bit office/access (64bit is really for specialised purposes, you'll find plenty of detail on the web)

re win 8, I use 8.1 without any issues, not yet migrated to win 10, but there is a thread here discussing it.

http://www.access-programmers.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=278894&goto=newpost

If you are buying new, you probably won't have much choice in the matter anyway.

Personally I would avoid Office 2013 and 365 for now but again there are plenty of differing opinions. If you are 'developing for the masses' use what they are using. I think it is safe to ignore 2003 and earlier. 2003 is perfectly useable (but not sure if it would work on win10) - it is no longer supported and quite frankly, if a customer doesn't have the budget to spend a few pounds on an upgrade, they probably can't afford you.

I still support one client running 2003, although support is probably the wrong word - nothing has gone wrong with it for 10 years and no changes have been required and their view is 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'.

How much should you be paying? - up to you, you get what you pay for, but go for the best processor, memory and HDD (or better SSD) and ideally something that supports multiple screens (I use a minimum of 3 (one for the design gui, one for the code window and one for reference material etc) but can go up to 5 if required.

Where to go? Your local store or the internet.

Don't think you can get office on a CD/DVD anymore and licencing is pretty much tied down to prevent multiple installations

If you know VB, why not use sql server express or MySQL as a backend and visual studio or similar to develop the front end - at least you won't need to learn new skills.