Brad isn't the only one to return from vacation to hear this most disappointing news.
I'm a little shocked...from what I can tell, we are basically going to have to pay for our technical support and service packs from now on. A whopping $2K a year. Apparantly with penalty if you don't maintain a continuous subscription as well. All this fun starts upon our next upgrade...we get one year of *what we had before* then its payola after that. What are we getting for all this extra money? As far as I can tell, only *what we had before*. What about that giant Protel 99se price increase to boot?? Without some tangible promise of...something... for all this extra money, this looks like clear gouging from our standpoint. I have seen no promise of anything different than what we currently get. I can't believe that Protel isn't offering even token promises of improvement in the area that we are now going to be charged for... now that's arrogance. Protel is throwing away one if its most important market advantages. Especially since free support and service packs go a long way to help smooth over so many of their other problems. I'll bet there are quite a few within the company itself that strongly disagree with this course change, this kind of thing could divide many who work there. Guess vacation is over... Frank At 07:32 AM 11/9/2001 +1100, Ian Wilson wrote: >On 09:00 AM 8/11/2001 -0800, Brad Velander said: >>Hi all, >> seems in reading this message that I may have missed something >>significant while I was away on vacation. I did not receive any email about >>this "ATS", does anybody still have a copy of the email that they can >>forward to me? Was this email posted to the EDA forum or was it sent via >>personal email? >>Sounds like Protel is changing their upgrade and support policies and I >>should be aware of these changes. >> >>Sincerely, >>Brad Velander. > >Personal email. (Copy sent direct) > >But you can get all the guff from the Protel www site. > >By my calculations it appears Protel support cost have about doubled - >assuming the current roughly 2 year upgrade cycle. What's more the support >costs are now the same as PCAD. For Protel this equates to about 25% per >annum. > >What should be remembered though is that there is about a year (from the >next upgrade) before existing P99SE users are affected. But I am yet to >be convinced, and will be lobbying for a *very* significant reduction in >the annual maintenance cost. > >I do not like yearly maintenance as I can't see how it encourages good, >responsive-to-the-market software. But I would probably go along with it >if it reflected roughly the current upgrade cost. > >Ian Wilson Frank Gilley Dell-Star Technologies (918) 838-1973 Phone (918) 838-8814 Fax [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.dellstar.com * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * To post a message: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * To leave this list visit: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/leave.html * * Contact the list manager: * mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * Forum Guidelines Rules: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/forumrules.html * * Browse or Search previous postings: * http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
