I just re-installed my licensed copy of Time Matters so I could close out my old files. I figured I might as well run the most up-to-date version, but when I visited the Time Matters website to look for the patches and updates, lo and behold, they have disappeared!

Even completely free software offers patches and upgrades! What do you get for your $500+ copy of bad software? A guarantee that you will be spending the same amount for software just as bad in the near future.

Version 8.04 of my favorite Linux operating system, Ubuntu, is a big deal. It is a collection of small changes that add up to a big improvement. It is also a long-term service edition, meaning Canonical will support version 8.04 for twice as long as its regular releases.

7.10 was a big leap. 8.04 is a small one, but a ton of small improvements have really come together to make 8.04 well worth downloading. If you want to try it, download a LiveCD and try Ubuntu without installing it. If you like it, it is easy to set up a dual-boot with Windows, although, like me, you will soon start thinking about wiping Windows off your computer entirely.

I am still using 7.10 on my laptop—my main work computer—until the early kinks are worked out. But I am using 8.04 on another computer (and have since the beta came out), and I do not expect too many kinks. Everything seems to Just Work.

In a comment on the ever-popular “Speeding up Time Matters” post, Tom Rowe, who is apparently a Time Matters consultant, wrote the following:

As a long time CIC and Time Matters users, I have to say that many of the posts here are fair. I am sure that many of the posters who are/were using TM 6-8 had many of the issues described.

The problem, according to Rowe, was that Time Matters was (and still is) written with included outdated code that could not handle a modern computer. According to my research, the code included in the current version of Time Matters is still outdated.

In fact, the programming language–Clarion–used 16-bit components until very recently, according to Wikipedia. (For those of you who do not understand the significance, I think the last 16-bit Windows operating system was the ten-year-old Windows 98, and even that was a hybrid 16-bit/32-bit OS.) Rowe suggests that “dropping back to a circa 2003 computer” might have solved most of the problems. In other words, Time Matters is ancient tech. It is slow and crashes because it was designed to run on the computer and operating system you had ten years ago.

With Time Matters 9, Rowe claims many of the problems were solved:

In any event, in TM8, SR2 (and then carried over into TM9) the dlls were updated and performance dramatically improved. I know … I am responsible for several thousand TM seats, and while there are still problems, TM8SR2 and TM9 are dramatically more fault tolerant and stable.

If that makes you feel better, note that while Time Matters may have finally upgraded to 32-bit, computers and operating systems coming out today are moving to 64-bit. Keep using that circa 2007 computer if you want basic functionality. It will be another decade before Time Matters catches up.

(On the other hand, if you are stuck using Time Matters, Tom Rowe seems to know the software inside and out, with all its faults. Maybe he can help you keep TM chugging along.)