Mathcad Prime 3.1

Earlier posts in this discussion suggested that new users - ones unfamiliar with Mathcad 15 - would become the support base for Prime. I'm not so sure. Prime's user interface is worse than almost any other Windows program, and new users will quickly realize it. Would they really become continuing users? That makes me question the value of Student Edition and of Mathcad Express. Wouldn't exposing new users to a buggy, slow beta version simply repel them, so they never return?

But perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps new users will be persuaded by the prospect of continuing improvement, version by version. We older users were certainly caught up by a similar narrative in the original Mathcad.

In the meantime, PTC collect our annual support payments as they move Prime ever so slowly toward useability. Oddly, I find that almost all of my questions to the support team involve PTC-generated problems, such as workarounds for Mcad 15 problems in Windows 7 or 8 (bugs that are not fixed or advertised) or license difficulties.

I suppose, if Mcad 15 is really going to be left out to dry at some point, then we should let go of our outrage at what PTC are doing and try to help the development of Prime - because that's all we'll have, ultimately. Unless we have left by then for other computational packages, of course. Perhaps we could provide detailed bug lists or fix-now lists, by category. Is there already a channel for this?

Actually, I expect that fixing bugs is currently a lower priority for PTC than adding the appearance of greater functionality. Maybe they plan a wave of bug fixes at some point in future. If they have any users left.

Jim