Re: 2008 Beta Registration is now open

On Apr 13, 12:33 am, neils...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
hi Nev

Re the licence from what I can gleen it just means phoning home to
track which pc its active on I think.
whats your issue with it? required internet connection?

cheers Neil

Neil, given the headaches of keeping Win XP tip top, I simply don't
ever put my PC online any more. In fact, mine hasn't been online
since I moved in a new hard drive & did the initial MS updates 2 years
back. Thus, I do wonder what SolidWorks 2008 would require.

The automatic assumption that users in this day and age will put up
with major wasted hours on our professional hardware is a bit naive.
When I do access the Internet I go on my Mac, but if I was "All
Windows", I would simply have another cheap PC do the access (like my
$599 MacMini with WinXP).

Given the problems Windows has staying at high performance for 3D CAD,
my opinion is there is no valid business reason for allowing such a
workstation on the Internet. It is just asking for major wasted
hours, and lost business profits.

How much? Any designer worth his salt gets billed out around $50-$100
per hour. The last time I switched hard drives and reinstalled
everything from scratch from CDs/DVDs plus something over 100 updates,
& downloads for both firmware & software it was 20 hours. I have
heard of malware & other problems causing users about 4-8 hrs per
month (indeed this is just from users statements, no science), & some
have said 15+ hours per month.

Thus if a designer looses 50-100 hours per year, his firm loses $2500
to $10,000 per year because Windows takes so danged much time to
maintain, update and fix. Some people spend a lot more than that.

Some users spend minimal time doing maintainance, and their machines
don't run as fast as they should. That is an insidious productivity
loss to tolerate, just because of lax policy. If I had to maintain a
group of 3D CAD workstations, I would run a speed test every week to
make sure that performance levels were maintained.

Now we have Microsoft forcing people to upgrade to VISTA, as articles
have recently noted MS people visiting computer stores and yanking all
the remaining XP OS disks off the shelves. I have heard of companies
shooting themselves before, but now I am truly convinced that Gates &
Ballmer have done something that will alter many PC users view of MS
forever.

Forcing people today to buy VISTA, when it is not ready for Prime Time
is a severe blow against your customers. Forcing users to buy an OS
that is even higher priced than the prior version and comes in as many
models as Chevrolet has cars is just nuts.

For the first time, I am actually thinking of never leaving Win XP,
and just finishing out the rest of my SolidWorks years on 2006 or
2007. If I really have to move beyond that, I'll analyze it years
down the road.

Bo


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