Re: state of the SW universe?

Neil: "what is the reason(s) most of the group arent upgrading then?
UI borked? admin and bug fatigue? little or nothing attractive about
the new stuff? other CAD looks better? tight budget? bad press?.."


I think the number one reason is quite simply that they done see a
good enough reason to upgrade. Basically, the new stuff in the new
version is something that they very well can do without.

It may interest you to know that at SYCODE, we sell add-ins to
customers who are still using SolidWorks 2001 and are quite happy with
it. We have a policy of sup****ting versions as early as is technically
possible and economically feasible. For example, we develop and
sup****t plug-ins for AutoCAD 2000 onwards. And I am not talking about
maintaining old products. A brand new AutoCAD plug-in that we launch
will work with AutoCAD 2000. Same goes for SolidWorks 2001.

Now you may ask why do we go to these extra pains of sup****ting legacy
versions. Well, I believe that every customer is im****tant. Just
because he uses (and is quite happy with) an older version of the
software it doesn't mean that we close the doors on him. And by the
way, most our plug-ins are sold to users who are not using the latest
version of the software available. They are one or two versions below.

My point is, some people are quite happy driving their tried and
tested 5 year old car simply because they need to get from point A to
point B. Not everybody needs the latest model, especially if the
latest model is known to break down after every 10 miles.

Deelip Menezes
www.deelip.com