Valid argument and complaint, but I wonder how many Altium customers
were there? And how many potential customers? The cost of going to this
was 2/3 of the price we paid for the software. The major reason we have
Altium product is it's price. I don't think I have to explain why nobody
from our company was there. What customer would spend 2/3 of the price
of the software they are thinking of buying to go to a conference to
talk to the software developer? That's a lot of money for both Altium to
spend to be at PCB West for the number of customers they might meet and
the customer to spend to go. You'll find more customers at Wal-mart or
Burger King, although really it's more of a sack lunch crowd.

-----Original Message-----
From: DesignerCouncil [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Ringle, Cyrus
Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2004 5:55 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [DC] Soap Box - Altium absent at PCB West. Was it bad timing or
is Altium off TRACK with a different tool path?


Dear Altium and Brent Smith,

Being that I live in Arizona and it is spring season baseball time I
would rate Altium's decision to not participate at the PCB West as a
swing and a miss but, booo! Altium looked as if they did not even try.

I attended PCB West last week and was very disappointed not to see
Altium representing PCAD and Protel tools at the vendor show.  Many
people that I talked to had similar things or lack of things to say
about Altium.  Most of the conversation was about questioning the tools
path or focus.  I heard rumors or was it rumors herd, that PCAD and
Protel were going to merge into one common tool.  Maybe this would be a
good thing but I really wonder if anyone cares but the current users.  I
was not able to go to PCB West last year but the year before ACCEL had a
booth where ACCEL PCAD and Protel names were all displayed at the same
both.  Looking at it then it looked as if they were unsure of who they
or their customers were.  Now that you call yourself Altium you decide
to not even show up, worse you thought it better to only showcase yet
another tool Nexar.

Wake up Altium other PCB Design vendors are getting noticed while you
look unfocused and uninteresting to your current PCB Tool users.  There
are fewer and fewer PCAD users in the Arizona area with both Mentor and
Intercept supporting local sales offices.  I do not know of any major
business other than us that are currently using PCAD or Protel for new
design.  I would hope that Altium will hear these words and make better
communication decisions before others are forced to make better tool
decisions only by moving to a different tool with support.  PCAD's next
release incorporating LiveDesign oddly skips from PCAD2002 to PCAD2004.
Am I just cynical or is it odd how PCB tool vendors switch between
having a design manager they are moving away from promising stand alone
best of breed or a new one that promises converged nirvana.  Personally
I prefer the converged nirvana myself because upgrades are easier to
manage as a collective whole as opposed to well it depends.

We at Inter-Tel use a Mentor tool for Schematic entry and the Cadence
SPECCTRA router along side of PCAD for PCB layout.  Personally dealing
with all of these vendors and support issues has been both frustrating
and rewarding with PCAD support lately being heavily weighted on the
side of frustrating.  I rarely really have the use for support but in
the recent past PCAD support calls have gone unanswered going to voice
mail and emails were slow to respond. The worse thing that I learned is
knowing that if anything that I requested really needed to be
implemented in code it would have to wait until the next release because
they are already working on one now.  So I go on and solve my own
problems after being frustrated and upset at how many emails, phone
calls it takes to get a, "no we do not intend to even consider it until
the next release."  Why would I spend so much time trying to improve my
tool by dealing with support when I can simply solve my own problems?  I
guess now I know better but I am not going to give up hope because we
have a lot invested in PCAD.  I know that any solution to a new tool
will also require using PCAD while new designs are upgraded.  I can feel
good that PCAD does do a real good job at our legacy design with little
change. I think you see the irony in my last statement.

The Embedded Systems Conference looks to be a much larger audience than
PCB West could ever be and LiveDesign and Nexar sounds exciting and may
turn out to be a real success for Altium.  I hope the timing is just bad
but if LiveDesign and/or Nexar is the answer for Altium it would have
been really nice if we could have seen it at PCB West.  Altium could
have used PCB West as a way of preparing for the bigger Embedded Systems
Conference while letting current and future new users know that better
things are coming.

Please feel free to pass on my personal opinion about Altium's decision
not to attend PCB West.

The above personal opinions are just that opinions and they do not
reflect the views or opinions of my place of employment Inter-Tel, Inc.


Cyrus Ringle   CID +
IPC Advanced Certified Interconnect Designer
CAD Engineer
Inter-Tel, Inc.  http://www.inter-tel.com
7300 W. Boston St.
Chandler, AZ 85226
(480) 961-2263
mailto:[log in to unmask]
President of the Greater Phoenix Designers Council

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