Act! v18, the latest release of Act!, is expected to be made available on December 8th.
With this release, there is a strong encouragement for anyone still using Act! v15 (2013) to upgrade, as this is the last time they will be eligible for upgrade pricing.
There are not any official specifications for this release of Act! yet, however, here are our recommendations based on the V17 Specifications and our personal experiences.
Act! system Requirements:
- 2 GB available hard disk space (4 GB if product is downloaded)
- Internet connection
- 1 GB system memory
- 1.8 GHz processor
- Windows XP or Later
- Windows Server 2008 R2 or Later
- MSSQL 2008 R2 or Later
Evolution Marketing Recommendations:
For Client Machines:
- 10 GB+ Free hard disk space (as a general rule, you should also have 10-15% of your HDD free at a minimum as this impacts performance)
- Stable Internet Connection (For Remote users who are syncing while travelling, Syncing from a Tethered Smart Phone is acceptable, however you should ensure that you are able to remain in 1 place for the duration of the sync to maximise success)
- 4 GB minimum / 8 GB Recommended Total System Memory (Act! by itself can use 1 GB or more of Memory on its own, and you will need Memory Available for the Operating System, Office, and any other applications you are using)
- A Recent Model Dual/Quad Core Processor running at 2 GHz or greater
- Windows 7 or Later (v18 will be the first release to fully support Windows 10, this is important as most new PC’s now come bundled with Windows 10, which will also simplify upgrading your hardware if necessary)
- MS Office 2010 or Later (v18 will be the first release to fully support MS Office 2016 which is becoming more common)
For Server Machines:
- 10 GB+ Free hard disk space (as a general rule, you should also have 10-15% of your HDD free at a minimum as this impacts performance)
- Internet Connection (for Remote users to sync, the server will need a reliable connection, and will need either a static IP address or a FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name) )
- 8 GB Minimum / 12 GB+ Recommended Total System Memory (Act! Recommends that you allow 1 GB for the application itself + 200 MB for each user who will be connecting directly across the internal network. In addition to Memory that MSSQL will require (see below))
- A Recent Model Dual/Quad Core Processor running at 2 GHz minimum / Recent Model Quad/Octo Core Processor running at 2 Ghz+ recommended (this will vary based on your number of users, and your usage of Act! and can be expected to increase for 10 or more users. Syncing Remote Databases has significant impact on CPU performance, so the more RDBs that you have, the more Processing Power you will need)
- Windows Server 2012 or Later recommended
- MSSQL 2014 Recommended (v18 will use MSSQL 2014 by default, however you may have to use an earlier version, based on other software you have that also uses MSSQL for its database)
- MS Office 2010 or Later (v18 will be the first release to fully support MS Office 2016 which is becoming more common)
Important information and recommendations for MSSQL:
MSSQL Express limits CPU cores/sockets to 1 core, the amount of memory used by MSSQL 1 GB and the size of your data file to 10GB. For this reason, we recommend SQL Standard for any deployment over 20 users or 2GB in database size. Individual performance may vary based on actual database size, hardware variations, and product usage.
It is important to note that Larger Databases will require more memory to be available to MSSQL, especially if you have a large number of RDBs to sync.
As a general Rule, if you are not using MSSQL Standard already, you may not need it, but this can be properly determined when reviewing your system for Upgrade.
If MSSQL Standard is required, Evolution Marketing Recommends Purchasing Server Licensing with 1 user as Act! is the only service that will need to log into the database directly.