RoboHelp 5 or 6 - what to buy

[Andrea_L1]

(My apologies if this is already covered in a different topic or forum - I didn't see any titles that addressed this issue.)

We have some temporary writers that come in on a seasonal basis. We need to purchase RH licenses for them. The permanent writer who manages them is using RH X5, which is what the rest of us permanent writers are still using. This leads to a few questions:
- Is RH Office X5 still available for purchase?
- If not, can someone using RH X5 (in this case, our permanent writer) work on a project that's been worked on in RH X6 (the temps)?
If we can still purchase X5 for the temp team, that will solve our problems. If not, we'll need to decide whether to upgrade all of our permanent writers to X6 (we all need to be on the same version), sooner rather than later. Advice?

Thanks,

Andrea

[Captiv8r]

Hi Andrea

If you are looking for X5, you might try eBay. Otherwise, there is a way to work on projects using 6 and X5 in a mixed environment. But it involves careful and reasonably strict coordination among all parties involved.

Cheers... Rick

[Peter Grainge]

Can you not give the manager RH6 and when the temps leave, you guys use their copies?

[Andrea_L1]

Thanks Peter, and Rick.

We could certainly do that (give the manager RH 6 and later absorb the temps' copies), but upgrading right now would involve a lot of testing and tweaking of settings that we do not currently have the time to do. (Upgrades to our software often cause ripple effects into other areas of our workflow.) Also, the person managing the temps is part of our permanent staff of ~ 18 people, and we all share work on occasion, so it's not ideal for us to be on different versions (although we realize that at some point we will have to upgrade.)

Rick, would you care to elaborate on the "careful and reasonably strict coordination," or point me to a site that discusses this in detail? For the permanent staff, this might be feasible; but with folks who are only with us a few weeks a year and follow checklists for the processes, it might be more work than it's worth to try to cross versions. We will have to decide that.

Thanks very much to both of you for responding.