Some years ago I attempted to use Synopsys's FPGA Express and found it quite
disappointing -- we went out and purchased Veribest within weeks...

I wouldn't have minded any response about pricing, even out of date
prices. ;-

We're only thinking about buying two seats. When I thought about it
though, just finding out what other people had bought, which packages
and options and how much they cost, would have been quite interesting.
That would have been a guide to what we should be looking carefully at
buying.

You're right, there are a lot of options that could be purchased and
it would be interesting to find out what other users bought and which
options they found were most useful.

As for the comment about Altium support getting worse than prior
Protel
support, someone is feeding you a complete line of shit. Having used
Protel/Altium for the last 7 plus years, their support has gotten better
in
recent years.

Actually, all I know about Altium is what came up on a google search
of s.e.c and s.e.d. while searching for "Protel" and "Altium". I
read a number of posts about how the best version was Protel 99 and
that things had gone downhill since then.

However, it's possible that, as you mentioned, Altium has many more
features and is much more complex than any earlier version of Protel.
So it might appear that Altium is worse, but the bugs/feature ratio
may not have changed over the years.

That ratio might even have improved, but with enough new features, the
total absolute number of bugs has increased. So things look worse, but
they really aren't.

"Brad Velander" <bveland@SpamThis.com> wrote in message
news:QdVth.784759$5R2.565588@pd7urf3no...
Just to correct you on the one point, PADs does have a free viewer. At
least up until very recent versions, they did.

Thanks Brad, I'll try your suggestion -- it would be nice if I'm wong!
We're uisng PADS2005sp2 (we're on the $$$ maintenance plan...).

---Joel

As per your comments below.

We haven't purchased Protel/Altium in this decade so there is no
relevance to you.
The most recent pricing I am privy to, is approx. $11,000 USD per seat for
the full Altium AD package that includes their full FPGA & Tasking features
but not the Tasking hardware interface.

PADs, in my last experience a decade ago was a myriad of features and
packaging options that sometimes found you purchasing modules with not one
feature that you wanted but it was necessary for the next module that had a
few features that you did want. Starting out at approx. $5 - 7K as the very
bottom end, one quickly found yourself over $10K and even approaching $20K.
Now that is decade old information and pricing, but then my comments would
also be that their software is 2 decades old. It is truly a decade plus old
DOS engine with a cheesy GUI. If you are well used to Windows software and
conventions, throw that out the window if you purchase PADs.

There are also few professional users posting on the general web, they are
on the software specific list servers. Some of those listservers may let you
join, I know several won't because you are not a registered user (PADs and
maybe Altium. But I would give Altium a try, if you are serious they should
let you join as a sign of good faith and to allow you to research.).

--
Sincerely,
Brad Velander.

anon@no_email.com> wrote in message
news:spckr21a509lnc2kncuoi75ll1fq479234@4ax.com...

SNIP
I wouldn't have minded any response about pricing, even out of date
prices. ;-

We're only thinking about buying two seats. When I thought about it
though, just finding out what other people had bought, which packages
and options and how much they cost, would have been quite interesting.
That would have been a guide to what we should be looking carefully at
buying.

You're right, there are a lot of options that could be purchased and
it would be interesting to find out what other users bought and which
options they found were most useful.

anon@no_email.com> wrote in message
news:jhdkr29jhsakfacoa58nebplokeqko5g4f@4ax.com...
One acquintance we works at an end user company told me that their
ASIC design package didn't have a purchase price or annual maintenance
fee, just an annual license fee of $140K per year per seat. That price
also came with an NDA so he couldn't tell me which package he was
referring to.

Nice!

Ever read John Cooley's ESNUG newsletter? It's primarily aimed at people
using Synopsys tools doing digital ICs, and it has lots of good war stories.
Early on Synopsys didn't like the fact that John was publically exposing bugs
in their software, and tried very hard to sue him out of existance. Typical
big company arrogance there!