Matt, your comments reflect my thoughts, feelings and experience about this exactly and i paid for the DXP upgrade
so far i have found it cheaper to let it collect electronic dust Dennis Saputelli Matt Pobursky wrote: > > On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 22:29:43 +1000, Ian Wilson wrote: > > Otherwise the quote upgrade price is about $2500. Lets assume a > > designers on-cost is between 25 and 50 dollars per hour - 25 to 50 > > hours of improved productivity will pay for it, one week. So, the > > question then is how long will I have to be running DXP to get 25 to > > 50 hours of productivity improvement? > > > > That is the real question, not the actual cost. But this is a harder > > question to answer. > > > > I have been a little disingenuous here, I haven't included the > > learning curve which is significant in one area - queries. Add a few > > days for that. > > I think more than just a little disingenuous. I find it extremely > difficult to believe that anyone not already familiar with DXP can be > as productive as they are with 99SE "in a few days". In fact, this was > a major factor in my cost analysis of DXP vs. 99SE that led to my > decision to not upgrade. That and the fact that even after I go up the > learning curve, I haven't seen anything that will make my designs > better or happen more quickly or with less errors. > > I'm a reasonably smart guy having many years (20+) of experience with > engineering software in general. I figured more like 1-2 months to come > up to speed on DXP and become anywhere near as efficient as I am with > 99SE (primary rule of engineering management: engineers are eternal > optimists when it comes to time estimates! ;-)). I also figured I'd be > spending the first week or two just sorting out how everything works in > general. Following the posts on the Yahoo DXP list reinforces this > conclusion. > > I presume you have someone paying for your "seat time", i.e. you have > an employer that's issuing a paycheck whether your jobs are completed > or not and also continues to pay you while you are "going up the > learning curve" with new software. I'm an independent contractor and I > don't get paid unless the job gets done, so any time I spend learning > new software and struggling with a learning curve are "on my dime". > This is a significant cost to me -- a week of "learning time" costs me > ~$3000 in billable work. There has to be an awful lot of productivity > increase in DXP vs. 99SE to make it a paying proposition for me. > > Maybe I'm missing something, but I haven't seen much in DXP vs. 99SE > (at least to this point) that makes a huge difference to designers > doing everyday work (schematics and PCB's). Yes, I'm sure that some of > the features of DXP are "nice to haves" and "must haves" for a few > people. But for the masses of us doing basic schematic and PCB design > work, I just don't see it -- especially when you take into account the > "hidden costs", i.e. learning curve, design migration, etc. > > In the end, my conclusion is that DXP was primarily an artificial > direction change by Altium to generate cash sales to please the > stockholders and not driven by user demand. I don't believe there are > any fundamental flaws with 99SE that couldn't have been fixed, save for > the fact they'd be hard pressed to ask $2500-$8000 them. So drop > support for an existing (good) product and make a new one that is > essentially a "forced update" if you want any support into the future. > > I guess Altium figured it works great for Microsoft so they should > adopt the method too. In the meantime, I'll be sticking with 99SE and > living with the (known) problems it has, just as I'm sticking with > Windows 2000 until something better from someone else comes about. I > would love to see an SP7 that fixes the majority of existing bugs and > would even pay for it. But even if they are not fixed and no SP7 ever > emerges, I can't see any reason to upgrade to DXP. > > Just an opinion of a long time Protel user. > > Matt Pobursky > Maximum Performance Systems -- Dennis Saputelli ========= send only plain text please! - no HTML ========== _______________________________________________________________________ Integrated Controls, Inc. www.integratedcontrolsinc.com 2851 21st Street tel: 415-647-0480 San Francisco, CA 94110 fax: 415-647-3003 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 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] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
