2007 SP0.0 available

JUST MAKE SURE YOU HAVE UPDATED YOUR OS to WINDOWS XP. 2007 WILL NOT INSTALL ON WINDOWS 2000. YOU MUST HAVE XP

Reply to
j
Loading thread data ...

"neil" wrote in news:eaa8bo$1g5$ snipped-for-privacy@nntp.aioe.org:

My theory is that they are trying to get a larger sample.

Reply to
Dale Dunn

"TOP" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@m79g2000cwm.googlegroups.com:

The number of people posting was large enough to be representative of all SW users? Do you happen to remember any ballpark numbers? I'm curious. I'm not expert in statistics, so I'm not sure what would be significant. At any rate, it seems that every once in a while it would be necessary to get a larger sampling to make sure that the usual sampling is representative. Perhaps that's part of what a survey that seems obvious to us is trying to accomplish.

I do know that, of the 3 SW forums I looked into (c.c.sw, Eng-Tips, and SW's forum) this one has the most negative tone on average. SW quality certainly bears a big piece of the blame for that.

Reply to
Dale Dunn

I tend to believe that people who use a newsgroup are usually more 'nerdy', if you will. These same people would tend to push software a little harder and therefore, be more apt to find issues (bugs?). I would hope that someone at SolidWorks Corp. would see this and understand it. I mean, they are all much smarter than I.

Everybody I know is smarter than me.

Arlan :~)>

Reply to
Arlan.Murphy

That's because the other two are moderated, although I've seen some dooseys from our friend Mr Salvador remain on the SW forum. Eng-tips has a tendency to get a bit sappy, saccharine and over-polite because people are competing for gold stars, and because if you say anything critical, your message gets yanked. I've also found a higher percentage of mis-information on Eng-tips, or answers that are incorrect or incomplete. You rarely see people disagree or contradict one another there. People who go to Eng-tips don't mind moderation, advertisement, and web-based forums, none of which would fly here.

I definitely agree with the comment about c.c.sw being more nerdy and I'd guess a bit less mainstream because of the elitist underworld component active on usenet. Still, I think it just means that people feel more free to say what's on their minds here. Have a tough skin, an open mind and know how to use a plonk list.

For all its warts, I prefer this newsgroup. Its coming up on its 10th anniversary. The first post was May 14, 1997 by Greg Jankowski.

Reply to
matt

Saved !!! Now I don't have to risk it - just risk updating my win

2000. !!! Who is worse - Microsoft or SW ? The Devil or the deep blue sea?

How does one update w2k to XP - I have the disks but never bothered after sw2005 sp0 would only run on xp sp1 not xp sp2.

Is it simply a case of shoving in the XP disks and letting it upgrade the Win2000. I have never updated an OS before - I have usually just bought a new computer :-) as it only happpens every 3-4 years.

Jonathan

Reply to
jjs

We must hold a party - I have a 4.5 litre bottle of Famous Grouse whiskey that I could drink !! - No so difficult as its already half empty !

Jonathan

Reply to
jjs

Similar to SW, unless you're doing a parallel install (dual boot), rip the old one out. MS systems in particular accumulate garbage as the days pass, and upgrading an OS is notoriously the worst.

It's not hard. Make a backup copy of everything you care about. (Just copy everything, because you care about things you may not know about.) Get all your drivers together, and make sure you won't need any RAID drivers on a floppy. Boot from the CD and hold your breath as you select "format c:"

Reply to
Dale Dunn

I agree that upgrading an OS is a worse in general than a full install. That's what I usually do also. But at the same time, I've seen and experienced good upgrades as well.

I wouldn't dump this into a general statement saying no don't do it. Instead I would say something like: If you have taken care of your system, not overloaded it with junk, not surfed some of the "less trustworthy" websites, kept an updated anti-virus/anti-spyware running constantly, etc., etc., then upgrading should be fine. Otherwise, dump the existing OS and do a fresh install.

I try to keep my system as clean as possible for that reason. When doing a fresh install, it takes me about 2-3 days of re-installing everything and setting everything up like I want. This could be cut down to about 1-2 hours with an upgrade.

Reply to
Seth Renigar

Hey Matt,

I'll repeat here what I just posted in the SW ng...

---------------------------------------------------- As I see it, things have to change in how this software is released or NOT released.

For instance, Why not have the paying customers say if it is ready for release or NOT?? The beta testers know there were a lot of regressions in this release and a lot of them not fixed yet, SW Corp released it? Why?

I honestly spent "very little time" beta testing and yet I was one of the top 25!? And, I found a lot of problems, which I could not always report because I did not have time and/or I could not consistently show the problems.

Do we pay for reliabilty and consistency or do we pay for developers and SW Corp to release regressed, buggy and half implemented features in hope the USERS will help them weed out the problems?? Out investment and their job is to provide the highest quality software available, no?

Otherwise, what is SW Corps commitment? To release what they can when the can and however they can within the margin of what is acceptable?.... currently, it seems exactly the case. We get what we pay for.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I really do feel numb about this because in a inverted way, I believe we are the dead horse being beaten ourselves.

Reply to
Paul Salvador

Yeah, I agree, its not ready to be released. Someone other than users is pushing a schedule that doesn't exist.

Reply to
matt

Perhaps the aim is to give themselves more time to work out Vista issues? So out the door it goes....its ready...dump it on the guinea pigs... SW is beginning to suck big time as a company. Never thought I would say that but there is just no will to do it right is there... $$$$ and growth up - quality down :o(

Reply to
neil

Neil,

All I can say is, it's extremely frustrating knowing through all the years of using parametric modelers, that this product has something or has potential, yet SW continues to miss the mark! Why?... well, it points back to the original intent of the product or lack thereof for it's then intended purpose. This product, from the very beginning, never intended to go very far or it never intended to go as far as it has. What we have is a tool which has evolved from a limited idea to fill a hole in the mcad market. Sadly, SW continues to lack a cohesive framework for real design and engineering. SW has tried to be a lot of things and has become add-on impotent in the process.

..like the old adage, "there are too many fingers are in the pot",.. I think this is one of their big problems, SW doen't have a clear direction and/or never did.

..

Reply to
Paul Salvador

I am very angry about this issue. Although I don't like putting people down the SW CEO is a wuss. I will dump it in his lap.Forget the down to earth marketing BS. He couldn't front users to talk about 05 and he can't lead the company to deliver quality software for pro engineers and designers. This is CAD software that just looks good and has potential. Always potential Contrast this approach with MS. OK a lot of people have issues with MS but... quote from Ballmer ...Vista shipping 'when the product is ready'. That's right they work on it until the quality is up and then its released. If necessary they delay it and delay it again and the share value takes a hit. SW work on it until it doesn't crash too often and then we the consumer have to work with it ...sometime later - about 9 months - it's mostly good - i.e. not beta standard - and then we do it all over again.Hey but the $$$ are going up - bonuses anyone?. SW is not driven by quality.It is about appearances. Accumulated problems over the years mean SW is now 6 months out of phase with where it should be. If they have actually managed to get to the point where major bugs are resolved earlier than usual they have squandered that gain but moving on to thinking about 08 or whatever rather than taking that extra time to tackle the bugs and improve things. No reason at all not to spend another 2 months bringing it up to standard Piss poor 'direction'. I feel sorry for those SW employees who do their best. I feel even worse for 250,000 users who have put up with this garbage.

Reply to
neil

For me, hard drives are so cheap, I just take out the old hard drive and put a new one in and format, partition, install the WinXP Pro OS and then install SolidWorks.

Then you have ALL the data still on the old functional hard drive.

Safety First - Bo

Dale Dunn wrote:

Reply to
Bo

I'm no expect on statistics, but a sample of 100 is statistically significant and is considered representative of an entire population. Making assumption the sampling is unbiased.

Kman

Reply to
Kman

I think Eng-Tips SW forum claims around 15,000 users. That is significant, especially considering that it is a no BS site. Get out of line and other users bump you.

As far as statistics go, the size of the sample determines the probablity that the sample predicts the whole group. So a one user sample predicts the group with a very low probability of being right. On an assembly line they might sample three out of a hundred. If they are all good there is a certain probability that the batch is good. If one is found bad then a bigger sample is needed. Statistics are useful when you can't sample the whole batch either because it is so large or because the test of goodness destroys the product (like testing fuses).

With software we have a different situation. We have code and we have documentation. The documentation says the code should do certain things. One person can test the code against the documentation. If the tester covers 50% of the code and finds no errors then that alone should provide a very favorable evaluation. This is especially true if the code is tested in a random manner. However, if one person tests 50% of the code and finds a significant number of errors then you can strongly suspect that the rest of the code is just as bad. You will notice in my evaluation that personal preference and behavior is eliminated in the evaluation. There is the code and there is the documentation. It matters not that the person testing accepts the errors found, works around them or is dismayed by them. My conclusion is that if just one person evaluates SW objectively and reports the errors then it doesn't matter how many agree or disagree because the test is objective and can be repeated with the same result.

comp.cad.solidworks does not discriminate on who posts, Eng-Tips does. Eng-Tips would probably not allow a post that contained any kind of statistical data bashing SolidWorks. This NG does allow that. So even though Eng-Tips might, and I say might, have more users than this NG, this NG will likely have one or more people on it who have tested SW and compiled a collection of errors that is significant. This NG therefore is significant in determining whether SW is a stable, reliable, and error free software if such a person(s) has posted. It only takes one user.

Imagine 50 frogs in a pot with a fire under it. The 51st frog is sitting beside the pot and jumps in. It immediately jumps out because it is able to determine the pot is not a good place to be. It implores the other 50 to jump out, but they are happy to be were they are not sensing the danger. A large group is not always right if it is not able to objectively evaluate it's situation. A democracy is flawed if its members cannot make the right decisions.

Reply to
TOP

Well said TOP.

I'd have to agree with the majority here in voicing that they feel the software is dropping quality in the bag loads. :( What pisses me even more is that if you take a look at the 3D Rendering/Modeling community you'll see a quality level that is greater then the CAD level is. Yet its the same, if not more so, proffesional (not to put the 3D Animation/Modeling?rendering guys down at all!). Its just the first steps of design and function so demands more quality (at leas.t. you would think!). And yes they still have bugs and what not... but no where near as many as in the CAD fraternity nowadays!

not only that but they get features and useability added quickly and with what the users want...

It frustrates me so much to see so much potential in SW (and other CAD software) yet basic "damn it should just be able to do this already.. what generation is this!" features are not there, or just dont work how they should... or dont work correctily with their fellow features even!

/end rant

:P DWH

Reply to
Anonymous

Dale, Seth And Bo - Thanks for all your advice and confidence building measures ! ;-)

Off on holiday - so will now postpone my gamble until later - procrastination has its advantages - SW2007 sp0.1 will probably have been released by then and its only two weeks off !

Regards

Jonathan

Reply to
jjs

Great thread, good rants, great points.....

BUT what CHOICES are open to us ?........

at least for SMALL companies, CHOICES appear to me to be ..

  1. Stick with Solidworks Warts and all
  2. Go to pro-e .. more professional feel, ubiquitous in China, but more painful to use
  3. Inventor - I suspect similar Stability, problems to SWKS plus less functionality, and slightly less mainstrean
  4. Pay more - NX, Catia, but for small companies doing this is overkill.
  5. All the also rans ... Vellum, VX, etc etc ...... ie well less mainstream.

The hardest part would be re-training, loosing the years of speed in using solidworks, through use, the dip in work output while you get upto speed... not to meantion the costs.

Or what OTHER choices do we, as long term solidworks user/choosers, have ?

Reply to
Life in Mono

PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.