My Ebay saved search sprung into life recently and alerted me to a listing for a Dowty related item (I was an engineering apprentice there in the distant past). I'm now the proud owner of a Dowty Mining Equipment Ltd paperwork celebrating the company receiving the Queen's Award for Exports, 1980 and 1981. For the [...]
You can imagine my excitement when I read this story. I used to love programming in FORTRAN, back in my Dowty Mining days. Anticipating my £21K winnings, I'd already started looking at new cars when I noticed this, at the bottom of the article: The sensitive nature of the code means the competition is only [...]
Hedgehogs are Britain's favourite mammal and 30 April - 6 May 2017 is Hedgehog Awareness Week. The week is organised by the British Hedgehog Preservation Society to highlight the problems facing hedgehogs and how people can help stop their decline. This year's focus is a campaign to try to reduce the numbers of hedgehogs hurt [...]
A new update to Herschel is now available here. This version tidies up things for new users and fixes a few small errors. Here’s the list: Newsletter signup added to help and login. Reindex your datafiles option tidied up behind the scenes. A new installation now advises user how to alter their business information. Currency [...]
We'd like to thank all our customers for their business over the last 25 years. Back in 1992, after two years of development, version 1 of the "Herschel Manufacturing System" was ready. We released it as "shareware", which meant people could try the software and then buy it if they liked it. We thought Herschel [...]
We've improved and streamlined our online shop and rationalised our product range. You can see it here. It's quick and easy to order our various support options and services. Support is now paid annually, to reduce paperwork and administration. All payments are now made using PayPal - although you don't need a PayPal account to [...]
I like to keep an eye on what the competition is doing. If you're looking for a system, I thought you might find the information useful. Here's my current list of companies who sell inventory control / ERP / MRP systems with similar features to Herschel. The information is from their websites. If you spot [...]
I've suddenly realised some people are still using Herschel with just one monitor. Don't you realise with two or three monitors you can spread those Herschel windows all over your huge desktop? And they auto-update! You can have Herschel, Outlook, Ebay and Facebook all open at once. And really impress office visitors.
Interesting story on the BBC news website about how the US nuclear weapons force still uses obsolete technology and 8-inch floppy disks. "This system remains in use because, in short, it still works," Pentagon spokeswoman Lt Col Valerie Henderson told the AFP news agency. It reminds me of the old version 11 of Herschel, which just [...]
Interesting (if slightly depressing) article by Ha-Joon Chang in today's Guardian about the need to reinvigorate British manufacturing: "The weakness of manufacturing is at the heart of the UK’s economic problems. Reversing three and a half decades of neglect will not be easy but, unless the country provides its industrial sector with more capital, stronger [...]
As an experiment, we bought a (very) cheap Windows 10 tablet on Amazon to play with. We loaded on Hershel and were surprised to find it ran perfectly. So we’re working on a tablet version of Herschel with bigger fonts and buttons. We’ll let you know when it’s ready. The picture shows a Herschel user [...]
We’d been putting off upgrading our PCs for over three years. Moving everything to new hardware was just too much hassle. I spoke to our local computer guru and he suggested replacing our hard disks with SSD drives. The new drives were fitted within a day and the results have been incredible. One PC which [...]
After months of toil, our new Freshdesk support site is now fully working. If you’ve signed up for Herschel support, just send details of any problems to support@herschel.freshdesk.com – a ticket will be automatically raised, allowing you to track the progress of your query. There’s also a dedicated knowledgebase, packed full of implantation guides, detailed [...]
I’ve visited yet another company where everything is done using single-user, unwieldy, labour intensive spreadsheets. I’m sure if I visited their factory in 1916 they’d have used exactly the same methods of working – except with a ledger and a fountain pen. If only they’d chuck out their spreadsheets (after importing them into Herschel, of [...]
Well, Windows 10 is here and (to echo Peter Allgood’s glowing praise of Herschel) it’s “quite good”. The great news is Herschel works fine on Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista and XP. All at the same time. Without SQL server. And as Windows 10 is the last version Microsoft plan to release, Herschel will run on [...]
It seems 2015 has been another grim year, according to this week’s Economist. “They were supposed to carry Britain aloft, but manufacturers have had a hard year”. British manufacturing has fallen to 9% of GDP – Germany’s is 20%. Britain’s deep problem is “to get its tens of thousands of small and medium-sized manufacturers to [...]
So we can give our customers the best possible support, we’re moving to the award winning Freshdesk support platform. Freshdesk is an incredible cloud based service, which means you’ll be able to access it from any of your devices. We’re also creating an advanced Freshdesk knowledgebase, which you can quickly search for instant answers.
