itsy bitsy CRM .. open and free

[Joseph Sinclair]

Centric was recently renamed to Concursive (www.concursive.com), and it's not going to run well on a laptop.  It's still a fairly simple install if you have basic Java skills (you have to build it from source to use the AGPL version), but it's still a web-based server, not a client application.
I don't think any full CRM will run well on a laptop, since they all want to be a web service, and running a server on a laptop is not a good idea (not to mention the privacy/goodwill nightmare a lost laptop would cause).
If you're really trying to do this on a laptop, a SAAS solution (like salesforce.com) is going to be a MUCH better choice, since then it doesn't matter what you access the service with, and you don't need to worry about a theft or loss of the laptop taking a big chunk of your business (and all of your customer trust) with it.  The per-user costs for a small business are lower, on an annual basis, than the cost of a server, backups, etc...

If you insist on keeping the entire business contact list on a laptop (what business is this, so I can avoid ever giving them any of my information?), then it sounds like what you might want is an advanced contact manager, not a full CRM.
There are a few simple contact management systems incorporated into the KDE and Gnome desktops, but I still haven't found anything that can compare to the proprietary ACT! for this use-case, unfortunately.  The closest would be the Golden Rules Organized (http://www.golden-rules.org/), which is free-as-in-beer, but NOT open source.


Trent Shipley wrote:
> I'm thinking that for this "CRM" running on a laptop and saving data in
> Access or SQL Server Lite (or 
> 
> HSQL database engine or "touchless" MySQL) would be appropriate, so J2EE
> is a bad sign right there.
> 
> 
> Is it reasonable for a user with decent user level skills and a laptop
> to use Centric CRM?
> 
> 
> 
> Joshua Zeidner wrote:
> 
>>   I've used Centric CRM.  Its an option if you have J2EE skills.  Its
>> architecture is more flexible than SugarCRM.  The SugarCRM project is
>> really dominated by the SugarCRM corporation so you're not really
>> going to get the FOSS experience there.
>>
>>   There's also VTiger which was an early fork of SugarCRM.
>>
>>    http://www.ohloh.net/p/vtiger
>>
>>  -jmz
>>
>> On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 1:10 PM, Stephen <cryptworks at gmail.com> wrote:
>>   
>>> Well i found a link on making Worpress a kind of lightweight CRM:
>>> http://chasesagum.com/using-wordpress-as-a-lighweight-crm
>>>
>>> There there is this Project useing sql lite and PHP:
>>> http://code.google.com/p/crm-light/
>>>
>>> And there ther is this thing i found as well:
>>> http://www.simplecustomer.com/
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 10:38 AM,  <tshipley at deru.com> wrote:
>>>     
>>>> SugarCRM is the first I ran across. My first impression was that it would be too big to use for this job.
>>>> Sent from my BlackBerry Smartphone provided by Alltel
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Eric Cope <eric.cope at gmail.com>
>>>> Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 09:57:55
>>>> To: Main PLUG discussion list<plug-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us>
>>>> Subject: Re: itsy bitsy CRM .. open and free
>>>>
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>>> --
>>> A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from
>>> rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.
>>>
>>> Stephen
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> 
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