Seems self eliminating.. I know..

[DougWilliams]

It seems strange to talk about alternatives to the CAT programs but, truthfully, it's more about sharing our experiences and finding a supported and continually update program. The CAT programs WILL stop working with a future version Windows, eventually, some day.

Now is the time to at least be knowledgeable of the alternatives.

I think we all would be appreciative of the any feedback you have from using another collecting software.

[George K]

I understand the search. My biggest requirement would be for the new software to be able to import the existing data in a "button-press" manner, since I have absolutely no coding knowledge.

I should have added that I have no plans to stop using Cattrax as long as it is functional. The only reason to quit would be for it to just stop working.

[LotsOCds]

The CAT programs WILL stop working with a future version Windows, eventually, some day.

I disagree that they inevitably WILL stop working with future versions of Windows. I still run some utilities that were written for Windows 2.0. Windows will have big troubles in the market if a future version obsoletes a broad swath of commercial applications including the CATs.

What will stop working is the ability to download information from online sites as supported by the Internet.dll files. At sometime there will no longer be updates to Internet.dll needed to keep up with changes to the web sites. Maybe some clever programmer will make an external application to do the same things, much like V4C did in the past.

Aside from that, I see no reason why the CATs will stop being viable for a very long time. I plan to use them indefinitely.

It's healthy to talk about alternatives and I will be reading everyone's comments with great interest.

[J.F. Le Deist]

Sorry, but I agree with George K.

Like him, I have absolutely no knowledge of coding, programming, ... I'm what software companies are calling "final user" : adding a name where it's written Name, selecting a publisher's name in the field "Publisher"...

I know that CAT programs will one day cease working on Windows; except if someone helps us to continue the program.

My preferences are :

1° Some company buy the CAT programs and continue Fredrik's work.
2° Someone helps us to transfer Bookcat to pure Access with no third part, no downloading information, no dll. Someone who could recreate links between tables, forms, queries,... I could use my databases with only the Office 365 subscription.
3° Transfer to Collectorz : already done. Every 2 monthes I export to Book Collector : Not as complete as BookCat but largely enough for me except some points. I'll discuss this on the Collectorz topic of this forum.
4°A good database ( for books ) is online but you don't "own" your datas : it's Librarything ( 40% owned by Abebooks [ = Amazon ] )

[Joer]

At the moment (and I think in the future too ) there is no serious alternatives to CAT progs.
The only hope is point 1) :

" 1° Some company buy the CAT programs and continue Fredrik's work "

but I have many doubts that we can find the Fredrik's seriousness.

[Tomvb]

The CAT programs are the only programs that I'm still running under Windows (in a virtual machine on my iMac). I'm therefore looking for alternatives that don't run under Windows only. Best would be that the alternative programs seamlessly support multiple platforms, like Windows, OS-X, Linux, Android and iOS.

[baeckerg]

Have a look at the App Viewer Discussion