Recently, as a LightSpeed (the software) owner, you may have received an email regarding ‘End of Life Notice’ from LightSpeed (the company). It’s a rather wordy email that takes a while to get to it’s point and, as a result, I’ve received a couple of emails about it.
DEAR LIGHTSPEED CUSTOMER,
LightSpeed will be phasing out support for legacy versions of LightSpeed and Web Store in 2012. These legacy versions provided a strong foundation for LightSpeed’s growth over the past 7 years, but constantly-changing technology means that older versions of our software become increasingly difficult to support and must be marked as ‘end of life’.
In short, if you run an old version of LightSpeed (the software) or Web Store, the people at LightSpeed (the company) are going to stop answering your technical support questions unless you upgrade.
They consider anything before LightSpeed 3.0 as ‘old’. LightSpeed 2.9.2 was the last version before 3.0 came out so if you’re still running that, contact my office immediately to talk about plans to update your system.
Additionally, the first edition of Web Store will suffer the same fate. Versions 1.0 to 1.3 use a completely different system and will need to be completely rewritten in order to upgrade to the new version 2.1.x. If you’re still running an old version of Web Store, contact my office immediately to discuss plans to migrate your website.
How do I check my version of LightSpeed?
When you open LightSpeed, you should be able to see the version number in the corner of the login window.
LightSpeed 2.9.2 Login Window
This screen shot shows an old 2.x login window with the version number in the corner. Notice the LightSpeed logo at the top has the number ’2′ next to it? As of LightSpeed 3.0, they stopped putting the version number in the logo.
How do I check my version of Web Store?
When viewing your own website in Safari, choose the ‘View Source’ option under the ‘View’ menu at the top of the screen. You should see the following code about ten lines down…
<meta name="Generator" content="LightSpeed Webstore 2.1.7" />
If it says anything less than 2.1.7, you should consider upgrading but if it says anything less than 2.0 then you should be very concerned.
How do I upgrade?
Both upgrades require an advanced level of knowledge regarding LightSpeed, Web Store, and the Mac OS so I don’t recommend attempting this yourself.
The new versions of LightSpeed won’t run on some older Macs and older operating systems so you may end up purchasing more than just the LightSpeed software. Additionally, getting your old data into a new system can be tricky and you risk losing your data if this is not done in the proper steps.
Web Store has to be completely redone from scratch if you want to move from 1.0/1.3 to the latest version. We’re very good at this so call us to set something up.
If you’re thinking that all of this could really add up to be a big expense, you’re right, but financing can be accomplished when there is a balance of hardware and software. If you find yourself having to upgrade your hardware at the same time, some of the software can be included in a monthly lease to ease the pain. Again, contact my office for more info on that.
Finally, if you run both an old version of LightSpeed and an old version of Web Store, know that the two must be upgraded together. The new Web Store requires a recent version of LightSpeed or it simply won’t work. Likewise, a new version of LightSpeed won’t be able to communicate with an old Web Store.
If you’ve been toying with the idea of increasing the number of users licenses for your LightSpeed system, now would be an excellent time to do so. Perhaps you’ve considered moving your main system to the back and getting a new computer for the front… or maybe it’s just time to expand. Either way, if you purchase that extra license now, Xsilva is willing to cut the cost on a barcode scanner for that new terminal by $190! By subsidizing the cost of the new scanner, it brings it down to only $79!
