When Thrifty Isn't Thrifty
I'm a thrifty girl by nature, but sometimes I can be a little too thrifty, as recent experience reminds me. Case in point: waiting too long to upgrade software and paying the price--though not necessarily from my wallet.
I've been trying new recipes lately (as well as revisiting some old ones) as Kathy and I revamp our eating plan. My old recipe software isn't cutting it, though, and it's time to upgrade. Here's the embarrassing part -- I've been using Mastercook version 5 all these years. Sierra (the publisher) hasn't been around in AGES – and as a player of computer adventure games, I mourn them. Anyway, back to the recipe software.
ValueSoft, the company that took over Mastercook, is now up to version 9, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to stay with the same software. I never DID like the interface, after all. Well, after doing some reading up on the different options, I chose to go with DVO's Cook'n software. It's a family-owned, support-friendly company that had a good demo, plus they have a bunch of add-on cookbooks. I picked up their version, "Cook'n with Betty Crocker" this weekend, along with a Lite and Healthy collection of recipes.
Everything was going fine until I tried to import one of my person cookbooks from Mastercook. Weirdness ensued, culiminated in corrupted files. I had to reinstall Cook'n. That's when I did some looking around and discovered that the file format changed when the software changed hands around version 6.2.
I need to solve this problem because it originally took me HOURS to enter my 200+ recipes. I have a cookbook of light recipes and family favorites that I collected over the years, as well as a collection of cosmetic recipes (such as homemade soaps, bath salts, and lotions).
The solution seems to be to get an inexpensive Mastercook that's version 6.2 or later, read my old files, save them with the new format, then import them into Cook'n. Now, version 9 sells for just $18.95 through Amazon.com, but this gets complicated, because according to the Valuesoft website, at least from version 8 on, they don't read Sierra Mastercook files at all. ACK!
Will Mastercook 7 read Mastercook 5? I can't tell. I'll run a low-cost test, though. PlanetCDROM.com is selling Mastercook 7 for $5.99, shipped. I'll try the import that way and see what happens.
I'm glad Family Tree Maker didn't do this sort of thing to me when I recently upgraded that application. In that case, too, had waited over five years between upgrades and the software had changed companies in the meantime. Wow, would I have been stormy, cranky Alix if I had lost all my genealogical data just because I waited to upgrade!
The moral of the story? If you have software you like, be sure to upgrade it every couple of versions, even if you think the old version is just fine. It would be shame to lose good data because you waited.
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