Geoff Harland wrote:
><snip> >But as long as their (prevailing) customers continue to accept what they are >being served up with, and don't complain more vigorously than what they have >been doing, I would find it very difficult to believe that the quality of the >software would, or actually has, improved to any significant extent. However I >have now had a gutsful of trying to improve matters; my efforts in that regard >have not been given the level of respect which I would regard as appropriate, >and it seems that most of the (prevailing) users are nowhere near as bothered >as I am about numerous defects in the software which simply shouldn't be >there. And as I suspect that various people on this list think that I am >grumbling without good cause, and are not of an inclination to back me when I >refer to matters concerning software quality, I've had enough. Good luck when >it comes to trying to improve matters, as I won't be making any more efforts >myself. > > A truly sad case, but not real news to most of us. That is why I am still on P99SE SP6, because I haven't seen any features that I really HAVE to have. The only yrhing that looks like significant improvement is handling boards with many similar channels. I have some techniques I have worked out on P99 that handle the problem, but it is not elegant or automatic. I also think reliability (both from a crashing standpoint as well as a quality of the error checking, etc.) is a MAJOR concern. P99SE with all the updates and fixes still has a few things that could be considered bugs, there are workarounds that keep you from falling into them pretty reliably. But, overall, once you know "the ropes" it is a very stable package, and gets the job done. I still post-view my Gerber layers to catch any dumb screw-ups, but if Protel's DRC says it is OK, I don't sit up at night sweating that the boards will come back with serious flaws. I just got another mailing from Altium a couple months ago, and glanced at the glitzy pictures in the flyer, but had a zero probability I'd send them any more of my money. I'm waiting for an open-source package that runs under Linux to come along that can match the functionality of P99. I may be waiting a long time..... Jon ____________________________________________________________ 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]
