Steve, and all:
The sad facts of life w.r.t. software:
1) If software was perfectly useful and bug-free, there would never be any
reason to upgrade it. Once all the seats that could be sold were sold, the
software company would go out of business.
2) Ever since I can remember, each new release has been touted with vague
superlatives seamless integration, increased functionality, ease of use,
etc. Few of these claims were ever actually realized.
3) Once software has achieved the needed functionality, the only thing that
can continue to sell is a periodic facelift of the software. How about
Microsoft Word? It hasn't seen any real improvement since v6.0. By v6.0 it
had all the features you could want in a word processor. What more was
there? I admit it could stand improvement in memory management, stability,
page layout, etc. But those improvements require re-engineering. That's
too costly. Add-on features are cheaper to do.
4) Open source software (OSS) is great, but where's the electronic CAD OSS?
The folks who should write it are too busy trying to earn a living to write
it.
Best regards,
Ivan Baggett
Bagotronix Inc.
website: www.bagotronix.com
- Original Message -
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Protel EDA Forum [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, March 11, 2002 11:10 AM
Subject: [PEDA] Altium Flyer in Today's Mail
I suspect others of you also received this flyer or will get it in the
next
day or two. Wondering what your reactions are. I see a number of things:
1) Now they want to SELL me the Tasking compiler toolset for the 8051
processor that I'll never use, for $800US. Maybe that's why they never
delivered the copy which they promised as being free to all registered
99SE
licensees last Fall?
2) They still claim they'll release Phoenix (the next generation Protel
design suite) within Q1 2002. Since beta test has apparently not yet even
started, I'm guessing with consideable confidence that it will be either
very
buggy or very late. Maybe both, as managers scramble to avoid the
embarrassment of another schedule slip
3) I'm curious to see if the new VHDL capability is actually going to be
useful, as I have some design work to do in that arena next year.
Hopefully
it will be better than the toy support for PLDs in 99SE.
4) I'm anxiously awaiting a look at what they mean by integrated
components
and libraries. If that means their programmers are going to strap some
more
constraints on our backs, goodbye. But if it means that the designers of
the
supplied schematic and PCB libraries might actually talk to one another,
so
that the libraries work together without major bugs, that would be a
serious
improvement. Of course, it's nothing more than a bug fix. I and many
others
who have posted here completely avoid the Protel libaries because they're
so
full of bugs.
5) Since they again tout their powerful simulation tools and extensive
project and document management features, but they don't indicate any new
features of those tools, I'm wondering if it's just the same old junk,
repackaged. Working would by itself be a wonderful new feature.
Don't get me wrong - I use and like Protel for schematic capture and PCB
layout. But the bugs remain annoying, and the other highly touted features
are a joke. Here's hoping Altium has been listening to this list a whole
lot
more than their new image leads me to believe. I'm still skeptical.
Steve Hendrix
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