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Hi Mathcad community members,
For those of you who don't know me (some do), my name is Andrew McGough and I'm the product manager for Mathcad here at PTC. I have talked to some of you in the past individually, but I don't get to participate as much as I'd like on the community. I hope this announcement is the start of me being able to be more active here.
I would like to share with you that PTC is announcing the end-of-sale for the following versions of PTC Mathcad, effective December 31, 2021:
Effective January 1, 2022, the only version of PTC Mathcad available for subscription will be PTC Mathcad Prime 7 and future versions of PTC Mathcad Prime. After December 31, 2021, PTC will no longer have the right to sell or distribute software versions moving to end of sale due to a third-party component contained in those versions.
I appreciate the passion of our Mathcad userbase, so I would like to pass along some additional information on a helpful offer. If you currently have a subscription license and wish to continue using your current version of PTC Mathcad while you evaluate Mathcad Prime 7, we are offering a multi-year renewal option that will give you the ability to use your current version for up to four additional years. If you decide to take advantage of this offer, it is important to place the order prior to December 7, 2021 to ensure no issues in booking the order or the subscription start date. PTC may decline or be unable to process orders received after that date. Please contact your PTC account representative or PTC partner for more information.
Please bear in mind that the use of old versions of software does introduce implicit risk in areas of security, hardware, and software platform support.
PTC will continue to provide technical support access, phone assistance and expert input for versions of Mathcad that have reached end-of-sale. PTC will not be able to issue new licenses or provide access to software downloads for end-of-sale versions.
Our customers in English-speaking countries received the End-of-Sale announcement on February 17, 2021. Our global customers are receiving the localized communication now.
We have put together multiple resources for you to answer your questions. Please refer to our FAQ for more information. We know this is a big change so the Mathcad team will be monitoring this thread for feedback.
Best regards,
Andrew McGough,
Product Manager, PTC
Here are "End-of-Sale Announcement" FAQ: https://www.mathcad.com/-/media/Files/PDFs/Mathcad/End-of-Sale-Mathcad-FAQ-2.pdf
I have yet to try Prime 7 but prior versions of Prime will not convert MathCad 15 into a functional worksheet so I have not adopted Prime so far. If, as I suspect, Prime 7 is still not able to convert my MC15 sheets which use checkboxes and radio buttons etc. then I will use the 4 remaining years of MC15 access to convert to either Maple or Mathematica. Well done PTC, you have finally driven me away!!
They have not written a version of Mathcad for macOS since Mathcad 6, so until they do, they will be missing 40% of the desktop market that do not use Microsoft Windows. It was a great program until Mathsoft was purchased by PTC, then it went downhill from there.
Will Mathcad 15 no longer be able to run? I have Mathcad 15 as well as Prime 7. After December will 15 no longer function on my desktop?
I am also wondering if the license I have for 7 will no longer work to use Mathcad 15?
Hi Dave,
Mathcad Prime 7.0 contains a combo-box input control that Mathcad 15.0 web control checkboxes and radio buttons will also convert to using if those are what you are using in the Mathcad 15.0 worksheet you're converting. If the combo-box input control UI in Prime 7.0 is acceptable for you, it may hep you transition to Prime. This doesn't mean we're not planning on adding checkboxes and radio buttons in future versions of Mathcad Prime.
Many thanks,
Andy.
To clarify, if you have a perpetual Mathcad license, this will not impact your use of Mathcad 15.0 - you can continue to use that after the end of this year.
Many thanks,
Andy.
Thanks for posting, @amcgough .
Mathcad is one of my favorite applications and many of the advanced features are heavily relied upon by my organization.
We are planning to upgrade to Mathcad Prime 7.0 later in the year; however, we are still running Mathcad Prime 6.0 in production.
If we update our license manager with new license pack up'reved for Prime 7.0 which does NOT include:
#254 Mathcad Image Processing Prime 6.0
#255 Mathcad Data Analysis Prime 6.0
#256 Mathcad Signal Processing Prime 6.0
#257 Mathcad Wavelets Prime 6.0
Will these advanced features continue to run in Prime 6.0 if I load the new license pack that has been up'reved for 7.0?
Andy,
Thanks for taking the time to reply. I have now looked at the combo box and this will work as a replacement for radio buttons and checkboxes to a degree. There are two other key omissions from Prime 7.0 and these are animation capabilities and components such as ODBC embedding or equivalent. Excel is supported so this offers a partial solution but animation is a must for me for two reasons. Visualization of dynamic results and scenario analysis where I use FRAME as a means of stepping though a number scenarios and saving the result to a CSV file. I can run this for many different scenarios and save much time in the process. I do not see an equivalent method to use in Prime and this would be a show stopper for me.
I have not used Mathcad since migrating to the Macintosh as Mathcad has not been on the Macintosh since Version 6. Virtualization is not currently an option because Microsoft does not license Windows 10 on ARM for M1 Macintosh computers and there is no reason why to limiting Mathcad to only a 60% marketshare of desktops.
This is unfortunate. After 7 releases of Mathcad Prime (and 11 years of development), it still hasn't reached feature parity with Mathsoft's pinnacle release. Mathcad Prime is essentially an ongoing public beta test.
Mathsoft's Mathcad was a word processor (e.g. Word, WordPerfect, etc.) that could do live math and plots. The text styles, bullets & numbering, page formatting (headers, footers, etc.) and polished plot formatting made professional-quality documents. And the customization offered in the user-defined unit system made unit management virtually transparent.
Sure, PTC has added some new features to Mathcad Prime, but none of that us useful enough to make up for the lack of text styles, default unit systems that aren't convenient, and horrible looking plots. No matter how hard you try, output from all of the Mathcad Prime releases is poorer quality vs. the Mathcad 15 benchmark.
If you're going to cut people off of Mathcad 15, then you'd better spend effort focusing on word processing features, page formatting, and plot formatting and user-defined unit system customization for the Prime 8 release. Lack of those features makes Mathcad Prime harder to use. It costs time (and money) to do manual formatting and constant fiddling with result units. It's hard to imagine that PTC still hasn't grasped this.
It does seem like the Mathcad Prime series has been problematic. From some of documentation that I have seen, it has a very poor rendering engine as compared to other software. The price of the software has skyrocketed since the Windows 3.1 days and it no longer has an appropriate benefit/price performance that it once had. Mathcad is not the only piece of software that has exponentially increased in price. Price as well as the limitation to Windows has really made Mathcad a niche software status and no longer viable as an Engineers Electronic notebook. I am sure that there are some open source programs that will fit the bill quite nicely that Mathcad once did.
Sad as it is, MC Prime has lost all the versatility of MC 15 and is therefore in no scenario a suitable replacement for MC 15. PTC never listened to customers in this regard and therefore ending previous versions of prime and MC15 has the appearance of another attempt to force prime onto customers.
Hi,
My apologies if you've asked these questions and not heard a response - that's not acceptable. Can you please let me know what process you used to ask them and I'll dig into why the questions went unanswered.
Do you have any purchase details for your seat of Mathcad 15.0? Like an SCN or an SON number? We could use those to track down your original order. When did you first purchase Mathcad? PTC moved to a subscription company in the last few years but if you continue to use Mathcad 15.0, and unless you actively converted your license to a subscription license through a sales engagement and regularly renew and retrieve that license from the license management webtools, you'll still be on a perpetual license.
For anyone wanting to contact Mathcad Sales, there is a contact me form on the website here:
https://www.mathcad.com/en/contact-us
Please feel free to reach out to me personally to let me know the list of items you still need to see in Mathcad Prime. We maintain a database of customer requested items - from feedback from customer engagements, from the community ideas site, from technical support cases, among other sources - and use that to prioritize functionality into each Mathcad Prime release. It may not seem like it when the functionality you want is yet to be added to Mathcad Prime, but we do listen and we do record what customers need. For example, redefinition warnings will be in Prime 8.0 because right now, of the functionality we still need to migrate, that is one of our top customer requested legacy functionalities.
Mathcad 15.0 and older versions of Mathcad Prime have to end of sale because after the end of this year we will no longer have the right to sell a third party component used in those applications. If you have a perpetual license you can continue to use it to run those versions of Mathcad. If you have a subscription, the multi-year option will allow you more time to run those versions and evaluate moving to the later version. Feedback on what users need to see next in the product is essential as it will help us prioritize the order in which we add the functionality we already have recorded, so I always appreciate this kind of feedback and the time customers take to provide it to us.
Many thanks,
Andy.
Hi Max,
I'm really sorry I missed this question when you asked it.
Those four 'extension pack' items you see in licenses for Prime 6.0 and earlier were in the license for when it was used to activate Mathcad 15.0 only. They automatically activated those extension packs in Mathcad 15.0. Mathcad Prime has no concept of extension packs, everything in Mathcad Prime is in the base product, so those extension pack items were redundant in the license if used to activate any version of Mathcad Prime. That's why you don't see those extension packs in the Prime 7.0 license - some changes were made to how the license works for Prime 7.0 and part of that removed those extension pack items (as they don't activate anything in Prime 7.0).
I hope that answers your question!
Many thanks,
Andy.
Thanks, Andy. This does answer my question. I consider Mathcad PTC's gift to engineers, ALL engineers, and appreciate your good work getting this software modernized.
Thanks Ben, that was the answer I needed. Unfortunately, the license was not perpetual.
Hello Andy,
Thanks for your reply. I used the link to sales you provided, entered all my details, got the promise that sales would get in touch by email and ... then nothing happened (so far). Well, there is an x hours time difference between here in Europe and the states and that might explain the lack of response. So, I'll reserve judgment until tomorrow. If things work out I'll let you know. If things do not work out I'll also let you know for sure.
But your reply also contained an invitation to let you know what items still like to see in Prime. Well, for me and, I suppose, many others decent graphs is number one. What is the use of an MC15 to MC Prime converter when all graphs in a graph-rich MC15 document become unusable and need reconstruction, assuming that that is possible with the less than basic attempt to graphs? The lack of decent graphics also prevents me from using the Prime 7.0 subscription that is now sitting idle on my hard disk while I continue to use MC15. And PTC has known from version 1 that engineers need decent, no, great graphs. Sorting that out would probably help many MC15 users to take the step to Prime (8?).
All right, all for now. I'll wait for a sign of life from sales. Why can't I just order the 4-year extension in the PTC webshop?
Hi,
If the Mathcad license you have is a subscription license, do you know when you purchased it? Mathcad subscription licenses are typically 1 or 2 years in length, so if the license still works (has not reached its end date) it should have been a pretty recent transaction you made with either the PTC sales team or a reseller (the PTC estore does sell a subscription but it’s an upgrade license from the Express version).
I have reached out to the Sales team with your enquiry - do you have an email address you used in the contact me form I can have them search for? They get a lot of enquiries and it will help them to pinpoint yours.
Many thanks,
Andy.
Hi Dave,
Thank you for the feedback. We do have animation and ODBC support already in our enhancement database as customer requested functionality (we tried an ODBC custom function some releases ago but it didn’t quite do what we wanted, but we may go that route again in the future).
Animation is functionality that’s been requested by a few customers and it’s something that’s on our list of higher priority items to add.
Many thanks,
Andy.
Hello Andy, thanks for replying. Yes, I bought my Prime 7 version in April this year. My license file runs to September 30 2022, so well into next year. Sales can reach me at j.ooms@oomselectronics.nl . Well, fingers crossed. Let's see what happens. And thanks for trying.
Best regards,
Hans
You can also buy a license through a PTC's reseller in your local region: https://www.ptc.com/en/partners/find-your-partner
Hi Hans,
By now someone from the Mathcad team should have reached out to you to arrange a discussion about your best path forward. Again, apologies for the lack of response to using the Contact Me form - that is the best way to contact PTC for Mathcad sales questions and the correct avenue to take. The messages are collected in a shared inbox for all sales enquiries and I know get answered in the order in which they come in, I'll dig into the delay in answering your specific question.
Many thanks,
Andy.
@amcgough wrote:
I appreciate the passion of our Mathcad userbase, so I would like to pass along some additional information on a helpful offer. If you currently have a subscription license and wish to continue using your current version of PTC Mathcad while you evaluate Mathcad Prime 7, we are offering a multi-year renewal option that will give you the ability to use your current version for up to four additional years. If you decide to take advantage of this offer, it is important to place the order prior to December 7, 2021 to ensure no issues in booking the order or the subscription start date. PTC may decline or be unable to process orders received after that date. Please contact your PTC account representative or PTC partner for more information.
Note that while it is after December 7, 2021, PTC can still process multi-year renewal orders right now. Be sure to talk with your account representative as soon as you can if your plan hasn't been settled yet.
Hey Andrew,
I bought Mathcad Prime 5.0 Student Edition on January 6th 2022 and had problems with the installation assistent. I can't select any program in the list after agreeing the license agreement.
While my search for a reason with my problem, I cought on your blog post. How is it possible that I could bought Mathcad Prime 5.0 at the official PTC Web Store in 2022 when PTC isn't allowed to sell older versions anymore?
Is the only way to get an working version to buy Prime 7 and it is possible to get my money back when the version I bought few days ago isn't working?
My Blog Post: https://community.ptc.com/t5/PTC-Mathcad-Installation/Problem-mit-Installationsassistent/m-p/771413#M1292
Where I bought Prime 5.0: https://store.ptc.com/store?Action=DisplayProductDetailsPage&Locale=de_DE&OfferID=44555721909&SiteID=ptc&ThemeID=21925700&productID=5102736200
Greetings Jonas
Hi Jonas,
I'm digging into this now. I'll send you a direct message to ask for a few more details.
Many thanks,
Andy.
Hey Jonas,
Really sorry for the inconvenience with this - I've discussed it with the systems team, we'll be rectifying the situation by providing you Mathcad Prime 7.0 instead of the version you were able to purchase (which is no longer available). We've begun the process of updating the ordering system to reflect this and you should receive a new purchase email with details on install and licensing within the next 24 hours or so.
Again, my apologies for this.
Andy.
Hi Andy,
I am reading this thread for the first time here in March 2022 with a sinking feeling, Maybe it's because I watched "Titanic" last night ... but I don't think so.
Let me introduce myself: I am an engineering manager in one those Fortune 500 companies that is one of your customers. I have for decades done my bit to convince junior engineers that they need to take a look at Mathcad. I am certain that Mathcad 15 is an enabler ... not just for productivity but for analysis at a synergistic level that goes beyond what can be accomplished using collections of other tools. At this moment, just this week, I am in the early stage of launching a project to update the analysis for an existing product that was designed using Mathcad and needs new features. I told several engineers they needed to get Mathcad on their computers and get familiar with it. I am now wondering if I have to abandon this path. Why would I knowingly build in obsolescence? This product will have a life cycle that runs for quite a bit more than a year or two. You may think "Mathcad Prime" will be my path forward into the future. No, sadly. I had a solid reason to work with Mathcad Prime 6 a year ago ... because I had some large arrays that Mathcad 15 could not handle. After months of working with it I can conclusively say there is no way I can convince engineers that are familiar with getting things done with Matlab and Excel that the learning curve for Mathcad is worth it. Why? Because the output of Mathcad Prime is next to worthless. The graphs are a bad joke. If someone at PTC thinks that communicating results of engineering analysis is a secondary part of the task that can be ignored ... please ... disabuse them of that notion.
I honestly solicit your advice on what to say to my engineers on Monday.
I am one of those permanent license holders to whom you promised that PTC would honor their licenses. I purchased educational Prime 2.0 in 2013 mostly to get MathCAD 15, while then associated with the University of MN Twin Cities. As Professor Emeritus of SD School of Mines, I used my henry.mot@sdsmt.edu email to identify the purchase. I no longer have access to that email account. I used MathCAD 15 to develop materials for a textbook project. Then, in 2017 as a member of the St. Cloud State University Faculty I purchased educational Prime 4.0 so I could access student work done using the Prime 4.0 that St. Cloud Stated licensed for its students. Both of these purchases came with perpetual licenses. The original license file from the 2013 purchase is attached. In order to activate the MathCAD 15 I needed to first activate Prime 2.0 and then direct MathCAD 15 to the issued license file. For the 2017 purchase (copies of the disc and contents are attached) the process was much the same. In 2020, again in order to be able to access my students' work done through the St. Cloud State system, I purchased an educational subscription to Prime 6.0 which had a one-year term. About that time, I needed to migrate my MathCAD 15 to a new PC and the tech who assisted me sent me a one-year license instead of a perpetual one to which I am entitled. That one-year license has of course expired. I have been to the website from which if I had a current product key for MathCAD 15 I could license the software. Since neither purchase of MathCAD 15 (with Prime 2.0 or 4.0) was I ever issued a product key for MathCAD 15 I cannot enter a valid product key. (see Prime 4 license queue and Prime 4 license queue response). The license I have for Prime 4.0 and MathCAD 15 remains valid - via my old computer (which is falling apart) - see Prime 4 license message. So, back in 2020 I was simply sent a license file and the instructions regarding how to activate it. I would request a similar approach at this time, except that the license file needs to be permanent.
Thank you for your assistance in this matter.
Henry Mott
Oops - defunct sdsmt account was henry.mott@sdsmt.edu.
Andy, so when my hard drive just crashed and I no longer have my license file for an already purchased and licensed and used product (Mathcad 15) for many years, you are saying I am out of luck? No Prime version does what Mathcad 15 does, so my documents cannot be ported into Prime nor even opened in Prime, so what you are saying is that I am out of luck totally with your product?
If so, I obviously will NOT be buying worthless Prime, and cannot recommend PTC ever again.
For anyone else reading this and wondering about the resolution, jhandley1967's Mathcad 15 perpetual licence has successfully been transferred to the new hard-drive.
Helllo,
I am 84 yrs old and have (or rather had) a student subscription to PTC Mathcad prime 6 with mathcad 15. I worked for 33 years
in remote sensing at ERIM in Ann Arbor and after retirement I volunteered a full 30% time as a tutor at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor Mich in their Learning Support Services department.
I have a version of Mathcad 7 for windows that I limped along with since retirement from ERIM on a windows 7 computer
with an XP emulator until a year or two ago when I purchased a windows 10 computer. Now, fully retired, I like to keep busy
studying and using my student Mathcad 15...but the license expired. I have no interest (or time left) to upgrading my software skills
with PTC Mathcad prime.
Is there any way you can help me in updating, purchasing a license for Mathcad 15?
thank you,
From my understanding the restriction in PTC providing versions of MathCAD prior to Prime 7 deal with a third-party licensed module that PTC is no longer allowed to distribute.
Unless PTC makes individual exceptions, you may have to bite the bullet and get a student copy of MathCAD Prime 7 or 8 for any future work.
This really is depressing news. I started using MathCAD in 1999 when the power supply engineer we interviewed and hired informed me he used it for his designs. Indeed, with that knowledge, I began to notice MathCAD was the dominant software used in many IEEE papers on power supply design topics. Graphs with log-log and log-linear axes clearly revealed everything from complex impedance to stability curves; very basic information but essential to understanding. A few years later I was fortunate enough to be hired as a power/analog engineer for design of scientific instruments intended for satellites, a position that greatly benefits from MathCADs ability to convert between engineering units with ease.
Over time computers were upgraded on a regular basis of 4-6 years depending on funds and the condition of the computer. Each upgrade request was submitted with a new request for MathCAD. When Prime came along, I was in the middle of an involved design, and the results of the conversion tool suggested this was not the time to change. Later in less stressful times I tried again, fixing all the remaining conversion errors until I got to the first graph and discovered there were no grid lines. That's when I knew, Prime would not work for me. Fortunately, the perpetual license for MathCAD 15 could use the license for those early Prime versions and nothing more was needed.
This last week I got my latest updated computer with MathCAD Prime 8 and discovered it was no longer possible to use the new license to access MathCAD 15. As is typical I'm in the middle of a new design of a pair of power supplies, the input filter and several sensitivity analyses that were all started with MathCAD 15. I believe I'm just over 3 years from retirement and have been encouraging the younger engineers I mentor to get and use MathCAD - and now I wonder why.
I will make an effort to submit a request through the sales contact link and see if there's any way to maintain access to MathCAD 15 using the license for Prime, but based on the posts above I don't have much hope.
For those making decisions at PTC it should be informative to have them review decades of technical papers that displayed data obviously created using MathCAD, and then to search for newer papers to see if that's still the case. I believe engineers are a creative group of people, and when their tools disappear the collective looks for the best alternatives and start adopting them. I have no doubt that if Prime can't deliver on the basic essential needs of their users, other tools will be adopted. It might have been 10 years ago when I was struggling with licensing issues, someone from Mathmatica reached out to encourage me to try their tool. At the university, we have access to both Mathmatica and Matlab. Yes, I would need to recreate all the tools I use for magnetics design, but in the end, my goal is to ensure the next generation of engineers can be as successful as I have been - a small payback for years of satisfying work with truly exceptional peers.
Regards,
Chris Belting
Thank you for the letter from Andrew McGough, the product manager for Mathcad at PTC announcing the end-of-sale for the following versions of PTC Mathcad, effective December 31, 2021:
That clarifies it that the owners are out of luck for above Mathcad versions. It would save great deal of time for Users if PTC would show this message during the Setup wizard process of CD installation.
I did try to use the "Contact us" link described above and found it very circular with all paths leading to failure - something I'm certain the programmers must be proud of. In the end, it is as I expected, offers to help are empty.
So there is no way to transfer a license from Prime 4, which permitted use of Mathcad 15, to a new computer, regardless of whether the license for both are perpetual. And since my new copy of Prime 8 has all the same problems graphing as all previous Prime versions, I see no reason to proceed with any new version of Mathcad. If I'm fortunate I'll be able to keep the old computer running Mathcad 15 and finish my current design, then invest the time and energy in creating a new set of tools on a new software platform that respects users. Good luck to all.
Dear @amcgough,
I would like to download my PTC Mathcad Prime 3.1 Student Edition – Perpetual License but unfortunately the 'BEGIN DOWNLOAD' button does not work. Please, forward me the instalation file. I would like to install application on the another computer. I paid for the perpetual license, so I do not understand why I cannot use my product. I am aware of Official PTC Mathcad 15 and Prime 1–6 End-of-Sale Announcement but it is not my problem. I bought perpetual licence. I have a right to the Mathcad Prime 3.1. Please forward to me from your archive Mathcad Prime 3.1 or newer with a suitable perpetual licence.
It is impossible to contact with your technical support. I can only to contact with you via forum or something like this. It is unacceptable. What I should do to use Mathcad Prime 3.1 or newer? Please remeber that I paid for PTC Mathcad Prime 3.1 Student Edition – Perpetual License and I have a right to the Mathcad. If you are not deliver fully version of Mathcad Prime 3.1 or newer with a suitable perpetual licence I will claim receive my money for Mathcad Prime 3.1. Please be aware that the Mathcad has to have unblocked all of the option because I have fully option in Mathcad Prime 3.1.
@amcgoughplease help me and tell me what I have to do step by step do use my product Mathcad Prime 3.1 or newer. Plese contact with my via email wojtek012795@wp.pl because it is suitbale way to resolve this case. I do not want to deliver more information here because it is emabarassing and uncomfortable.
Order Number: 9158813572
With my best regards
Wojciech Sawicki
So I have a permanent MathCad 15 license, but when I launch MathCad, it now says that my license is no longer valid. I have rebooted and reloaded the license with no success. I guess it may be time to convert to some other platform. However, I would like to at least print out the source code of my thousands of MathCad files. Can anyone help - the Prime conversion is just not adequate for complex program. I simply want to review the MathCad source code.
Hello,
I have a perpetual license for MC15, but my old PC is no longer working and installing MC15 on the new PC is not possible since I can not download a new license file anymore.
How can this be acceptable? I paid for a preputial license, and now its not possible to migrate this license to a new PC?
Please tell me how to get a new license file so I can continue to use the SW I paid for - thank you!
\\\Jens
Clearly no one is moderating these posts.
Can someone please help!
I agree, would be nice if ptc would reach out in person.
\\\Jens
Furthermore, the Prime version that is currently available does not have the features that are needed to support the worksheets that I have spent hundreds of hours making.
PTC, please do the right thing and make it possible to get a license file for a new installation of MC15. Any other decision is just plain arrogant and I would argue even illegal since the product I have paid for is simply disabled completely.
\\\Jens
I see on LinkedIn that Andrew McGough was product manager till April 2023 and is now Product Management Director. The comments may have become too depressing. Not just the reports of low utility of all the Prime versions, but also the user frustration with lack of support from sales.
From what I've seen of the technical support forums, that is pretty good. It may be mostly users helping others.
I started with MathCad 2.0, I think, bought as a counterfeit in Seoul, with a high-quality manual. I liked it so much that I started buying the real one, upgrading every other release or so until V 15. It was certainly useful but I was by no means a heavy, much less a power user. I suppose I have a perpetual license somewhere but that's a lost cause.
I never got into buying Prime because it was so blatantly STUPID to pay so much more for so much less. I get a trial copy every few years, but I never use anything beyond 15's abilities--but still, the features I use are not included in the Express edition.
It's all too sad.