I'm the Information Systems Support Engineer for a Dental Office in
Rockford Illinois.  We migrated from DOS/NOVEL based PCs to WIN95
peer-to-peer networked PCs - as per SoftDents Recommended configuration
as of that time.  Since the migration the office has had nothing but
problem after problem.  The Office staff has admittedly been using the
DOS - based interface under WIN95 far too long - though they claim some
functionality under the DOS based softdent is not available in the WIN95
version.  The Doctor is becomming progresssively adjetated as to the
stability Softdent.

I had recommended to the Doctor that instead of adopting the WIN95
peer-to-peer configuration, we should move to Windows NT, which from my
experience has been far superior in stability when compared to WIN95
peer-to-peer networking.  Unfortunately, Softdent would not approve this
configuration stating that "they knew WIN95 best" and could not
"signoff" on implementing Softdent on Win NT.  Now I see at the Softdent
Web site that it appears Softdent has fully embrased NT.

I am caught in a very difficult position.  Having gone with Softdents
original recommendation of using WIN95 peer-to-peer, trying to convince
the Doctor that we should now go WIN NT is problematic - there is
obviously a credibility problem here which by myself I simply cannot
overcome.  We either need to get the existing WIN95 configuration
stable, or if that is unattainable, be able to convince the Doctor that
the problems we have been encountering will be resolved by taking the
jump to NT.  We had some minor problems back when we were DOS/NOVELL &
the hope was that going to WIN95 would eliminate them.  Well, it appears
to have resolved many of the DOS/NOVELL problems, but introduced
numerous new problems.  If we go NT, we the Doctor is going to require
significant assurance that this will in fact help and not just be
another futile attempt to throw more money down a dark hole.

What troubles me most about all this is that, according to what the
Doctor has heard, no other Softdent Office has experienced the level of
problems that we have.  From my perspective that calls to mind possible
reasons for our situation: 1) our office is not using Softdent
correctly; 2) our PCs are defective; 3) Win95 is the culprit; 4)
Softdent has bugs.

Does Softdent provide any service whereby you would send out a technical
expert to review our PC, network, and Softdent configuration to rule out
the infrastructure as the source of the problem?  If that can be done,
perhaps we can ward off the expense of a forced migration to WIN NT.  In
any case, we have to get a handle on this and get these problems
resolved ASAP!.

If you would kindly reply, I will send you specifics as to the identity
of the Practice if required.

Thanks for your time & I look forward to a reply,

Michael Abel
IS Technical Engineer