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At 11:45 AM 10/4/01 -0700, P H wrote: >I am planning to get a EDA tool for my consulting >business. I am doing some researches on Protel and >P-CAD. I wonder if anyone can tell me about their >technical support services. > >What is their policy on support? Protel does not charge for support. This is the good news and the bad news. >How responsive they are to critical problems? Reasonably. But we have found that you get better response from the user mailing list, which is not *this* list (this is the Open Topic list) but the EDA Forum. >What is their average turn around time? Since I have never needed to contact them with a problem that required direct response, I can't say. >Do they have hotline support in US? To keep costs down, Protel encourages the use of email for support. The office here is not 24/7. The user mailing list is available nearly all the time, because there are Protel users all over the world, including many, obviously, in Australia, which largely covers the time when the U.S. is not active. The only time not well covered by the user list is when it is Saturday in the U.S. and Sunday in Australia. >Do they have support if I am in Japan with my client? I know that there is a very active Japanese sales and support office, I don't know whether or not they speak much English, I'd assume that some of the personnel do speak it. But with the user group, you will be able to get support any time from anywhere, assuming you have email access. Here is what is going to happen, almost certainly, if you go with Protel: you will need some help in accomplishing certain tasks with the software. Even though the documentation is better than it used to be, the software is complex enough that it is easy to overlook what the manual has explained, and so you can get faster answers from the user group. The users, collectively, actually know better how to use the software than does Protel support. Quite a few times Protel support has told users, no that can't be done, and the users were able to explain how to do it. Or Protel support has been unable to verify a bug report, and the users have done so. CAD companies in general are famous for offering great technical support options. Until you have paid for the software and you can't get through. You can pay $50K for software and find it very difficult to get support.... So read the manual and follow the tutorial and then start doing your own design. If anything seems cumbersome or difficult, *ask*! I also recommend identifying an experienced user and paying him or her to offer some advice. I've done this for some clients, over a month or two they used a few hours of my time, it was pretty cheap compared to what a Protel seminar costs. In addition, they could call me in business hours and get immediate attention. I'm sure there are a number of users out there, Protel service bureaus, who could do such a thing. Watch the user group and you will get an idea who could be helpful. But the user group is free. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Abdulrahman Lomax Easthampton, Massachusetts USA * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 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] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
