Harry,
Thanks for taking the time for the detailed reply. It is greatly
appreciated. A few comments:
You should have called your local sales office to get it in writing.
I actually had a call from them earlier this week, but when I saw the
Altium caller ID, I did not pick up. I do not even want to talk to them
in the few weeks before the end of a quarter. Actually, this is not
just the end of the quarter, it is the end of their fiscal year. It is
my personal experience that they will tell whatever lies they need to
tell to book a sale in the quarter. That is how they got me to buy the
DXP downgrade in June 2003. I agreed to buy on the condition that I
wanted a 60 day return instead of the 30 days (I was going away for 3
weeks) and with the absolute assurance the SP3 was going to be released
the next 2 weeks. When I tried to return after 45 days, I was told that
the 30 days was set in stone. The sales person even acknowledged that
he had agreed to 60 days, but could not actually honor it. We all know
about SP3. There is no way I would trust anything coming out of their
mouths when they are up against a deadline. All that said, I freely
acknowledge that it was my fault for not getting it all in writing.
AD6 has an automated web update capability which allows smaller, more
frequent patches - sort of like Microsoft does with Windows.
My firewall is set to not allow AD access to the web. I can't express
how stupid a person has to be to allow an application, be it AD or
Windows, to automatically go and download updates. "It was working
today and then it decided to get an update and now it is no longer
working and I have a board that need to go out to fab in the morning."
If you can not see yourself in that position, you are waaaaay too trusting.
My point being that you can only test to a reasonable point. Beyond
that, you have to depend on user feedback to try and track down the
state related glitches.
You are very right and the point is well taken. However, you focused
almost solely on state related glitches (software crashes on xyz
graphics card, wile watching a DVD and downloading a MP3). No company
can test for all of them and frankly not all of those failures are the
fault of the software that actually fails. My problem is that Altium
has demonstrated a lack of testing of basic functions and features. If
you look at some of the bug fixes in any SP1, you really have to wonder
if the software was ever tested. When you look at it in combination
with the marketing hype about how well the software has been tested, you
are hard pressed to give the company any credibility.
In the past, Altium's problem appears to be that it is the developers
and maybe professional "testers" that do the testing. That is a model
that does not work, not for Altium, not for any company. If you want to
test the software, you need people who have real world experience in the
product's application area do the testing by using real world examples.
A captive PCB design company that uses the pre-release products to
actually design customer boards would do wonders for the reliability of
the product. I know of one company, not in this industry, that credits
that model to the reliability of its products.
With a cynical outlook like yours....
Cynicism is what keeps me from wasting time on unreliable tools -- and
Altium has worked long and hard at earning that reputation for
unreliability. I am all for leading edge technology, but I will pass on
bleeding edge technology, especially bleeding edge technology from a
hemophiliac company.
I've gotten more skillful at using the tools in AD, so my productivity
has vastly improved. Its a good thing too, because the boards I need
to design keep getting denser and more complicated as technology
advances.
Frankly, having done a few simple boards in 2004, I can not foresee
myself reaching the level of productivity I have in 99SE. I have played
with AD, but have not done a complete board. The boards I do include
embedded Pentium motherboards that are of the same complexity level as a
typical laptop motherboard with differential pairs, controlled impedance
and matched lengths (the match being from die to die, accounting for the
unique length of each signal on the BGA).
You can learn how to drive a car (which is more complicated than
riding a horse), or you can keep riding your horse. The car has more
controls than the horse, but it gets you there faster with less pain
in your backside.
Bad analogy. Unless you plan to do nothing more than sit on a horse
while it wanders around the pasture, a horse actually has far more
controls than an automobile. Frankly, knowing a couple of championship
level riders as well as professional level drivers, I will have to say
that riding at that level requires far more skill than driving at that
level. And depending upon what you want to do, there are things that
you do on a horse that you can not do in an automobile.
Regards,
Hamid
____________________________________________________________
You are subscribed to the PEDA discussion forum
To Post messages:
mailto:[email protected]
Unsubscribe and Other Options:
http://techservinc.com/mailman/listinfo/peda_techservinc.com
Browse or Search Old Archives (2001-2004):
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
Browse or Search Current Archives (2004-Current):
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
