ALPHA FOUR IN PERSPECTIVE

Some people dismiss Alpha Four simply because Alpha Four is a "DOS software".  First, we would like to point out that as of today, among the largest companies in the U.S., more than half of the data processing tasks (such as payroll, account receivable, account payable) are performed by DOS-based or DOS-like programs.  In our view, Alpha Four, especially version 6 and on, is a user-friendly and very capable software for building database systems.  We think most of the users, or rather, most of the applications written, use less than 10% of what the software is capable of.  We have been supporting corporations that continue to use Alpha Four applications, some extensively. These clients include a marine insurance company that runs 85 percent of its business activities on Alpha Four, a chemical company that uses Alpha Four to record sales and generate invoices everyday, and a leading university on the east coast that uses Alpha Four to manage security across three campuses and generate all sorts of accident and crime reports.

With version 8 Alpha Four runs very efficiently under Windows 2000 and Windows XP.  We expect Microsoft to continue to support DOS in its future versions of Windows.  Hence Alpha Four will continue to perform for hundreds of corporate and individual users.

ALTERNATIVES

For those clients who need or prefer Windows-based programs, we help them rewrite Alpha Four applications in Alpha Five, Microsoft Access, or Microsoft SQL Server.  We believe that the decision to migrate to a Windows-based database program should depend on, among other considerations, whether you really need certain Windows-based functions which Alpha Four can not provide.