Last night my wife took her aunt to pay respect to an old friend no longer here.  While at the wake, my wife was approached by a person who knew her from years ago and started catching up from many years ago.

He told her that their company was still using GarageKeeper.  GarageKeeper is a software program developed by Computer Assistance out of Oregon, and designed for independent repair shops.  So far you may not think this is anything special, after all there are hundreds of programs for automotive repair shops.

What is unique is GarageKeeper was designed to work in DOS, yes that ancient operating system from years ago.  This client has not required support for their program in over ten years.  How many products can you say that about?  And especially software programs.

And this person isn’t a fluke as we have many old clients running GarageKeeper. It just keeps on trucking even though it doesn’t have the latest, greatest hardware.

While we haven’t sold GarageKeeper in many years, we created quite an installation base when we were their top distributor.  We were fortunate to install GarageKeeper in many shops including: Porsche, Jaguar, Mercedes Benz, BMW, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Alfa Romeo, Audi, Honda and many domestic shops.

Unfortunately, like many good things, the foundation for GarageKeeper will come to and end when Microsoft stops supporting Windows XP, on April 8, 2014.

Computer Assistance has released their latest replacement for GarageKeeper, Motive Power.  Hopefully this will provide automotive and independent repair shops with the same excellent, reliable service.  Only time will tell, but it is great to know we provided a product to a customer over 15 years ago and it is still going strong today.  Not many people can say that.