Re: Crashes, hangups, bugs

ptc-5349040 · ‎Oct 29, 2013

As I said in another post, there's a number of issues with Mathcad 14 I'm seeing while giving at a look: hangups, crashes, weird behaviour (e.g. printing out not what was specified etc.), poor screen updating (leftover garbage after editing or dragging), strange errors that I can't trace to anything meaningful, even after consulting user guide and the quicksheets, etc. Didn't care to document everything I saw so far, but feel free to check attached screenshots from my last attempt to do something in Mathcad (12-equation SoE).

One question is, is this normal or do I experience for some reason a behavior that shouldn't be observed? My hw is OK, I don't have issues with other software I use.

"Frustrated" doesn't begin to describe my experience, but after some pondering decided to join and ask (people here don't use it really, so I don't have a Mathcad expert down the corridor).

Fred_Kohlhepp · ‎Oct 29, 2013

What version do you have? And have you looked into the 30 day free trial of version 15?

Some versions of 14 were very buggy.

Werner_E · ‎Oct 29, 2013

Didn't care to document everything I saw so far, b

So far you didn't document or report anything concrete, so what kind of answer or help do you expect here?

If you encounter problems and errors which are in some way reproduceable you may consider contacting PTC support and report the problems to them.

And to answer the question as vague as it was made - I think we all have experienced errors, hangups, crashes, etc. with a variety of software products, so of course aslo including Mathcad.More often with MC than with other software? Can't tell as it depends on which SW you use how often, but I think I can say at least more often with MC than with M$ office products.

If the effects you experience are to be considered "normal", are due to installation errors, due to handling errors or are due to the fact that you use a year 2006 software in a 2013 environment can not be said from your "description". But as you say you don't care to document the problems it may not be that big an issue anyway.

So feel free to come back if you have a concrete problem you need help for and in the meantime - save often and in short intervals! Good luck!

BTW, as you use MC14 - there should be a free upgrade from PTC to MC14 M020. Versions prior to maintainace release M020 are considered to be quite buggy. If you can afford upgrade to MC15 and be happy you don't have to use the new Prime 😉

ptc-5349040 · ‎Oct 30, 2013

Thanks to everyone for taking time, details are as follows.

"are due to the fact that you use a year 2006 software in a 2013 environment"

No. Ironically,

Mathcad 14.0 M011 (14.0.1.286 [709051735])

Windows XP SP3

"there should be a free upgrade from PTC to MC14 M020"

Is M020 the latest maintenance release? I seem to recall

- seeing a higher-numbered version somewhere (not sure about it though) and

- reading that maintenance releases are available only to those who purchased a maintenance contract (is that correct?).

"And have you looked into the 30 day free trial of version 15?"

Well, does it provide the latest maintenance release (or whatever a bug-fixed release of Mathcad is called) or not? What are the exact versions of Mathcad 15 in the free trial and the latest maintenance release, in case anyone knows? My 14 is M011, so chances are it's more stable than a less "advanced" release of 15, right?

"But as you say you don't care to document the problems it may not be that big an issue anyway."

There's a difference between using Mathcad for real work and playing with toy problems and chit-chatting in a forum. Lost work (and time) because of crashes or hangups are certainly an issue. So are all sorts of weird behaviour like printing not what was specified, garbage on screen, etc.

And do PTC welcome writing on their public forum about the problems with their software? Besides, bug reports take time, and quality bug reports take skill on top of that. Do they pay people (or reward them in some other manner) for doing the job that their QA dept is supposed to do?

Werner_E · ‎Oct 30, 2013

"are due to the fact that you use a year 2006 software in a 2013 environment"
No. Ironically,
Mathcad 14.0 M011 (14.0.1.286 [709051735])
(c) 2007 PTC
Windows XP SP3
(c) 2007 Microsoft

Was just listing some points which may cause problems. And even if you have XP as OS I guess there are in the meantime a lot of updates installed (e.g. for the underlying dotNET 3.5) which MC14 wasn't aware of at those time).

"there should be a free upgrade from PTC to MC14 M020"
Is M020 the latest maintenance release? I seem to recall
- seeing a higher-numbered version somewhere (not sure about it though) and
- reading that maintenance releases are available only to those who purchased a maintenance contract (is that correct?).

The latest version of this branch of Mathcad is 15 M020. The latest maintainance release for MC14 was M035. And because you are right about only customers under maintainance being entitled to get bugfixes/maintainance releaases (which is not as it should be IMHO) I suggested to upgrade to M020. M020 was a maintainance release which was free to ALL customers, maintainance or not. This may be a sign that PTC considered prior versions of MC14 to be really buggy and there was a great pressure from customers which forced PTC to give away this release to all. I don't know if you are still able nowadays to find this release on the PTC homepage (its a nightmare to navigate) - so maybe contacting PTC support can help with this. PTC is promoting heavily Prime as the new Mathcad and its even hard to find the eval version of MC15 on their pages.

"And have you looked into the 30 day free trial of version 15?"
Well, does it provide the latest maintenance release (or whatever a bug-fixed release of Mathcad is called) or not? What are the exact versions of Mathcad 15 in the free trial and the latest maintenance release, in case anyone knows? My 14 is M011, so chances are it's more stable than a less "advanced" release of 15, right?

Don't think so. There was a releases MC14 M040 planned and then PTC decided to release it as MC15 F000. Showing presence and milking the cow, I guess. So I would say that Mathcad 15 is not more unstable than MC14. The maintainance releases for MC14 are of course included in 15 as well. The version PTC is really working on at the time is called Mathcad Prime. We have already version 3 of this software and a lot people consider that it still does not live up to MC15. But if you buy Prime you get a copy of MC15 for free. One to play with and look what the future may look like and one if you intend to use it for real work, I guess. But I am biased, I don't like Prime as it is - so judge yourself.

There's a difference between using Mathcad for real work and playing with toy problems and chit-chatting in a forum.

Maybe you weren't around long enough to be able to judge? It sure is not a "you are one class higher? please make my homework" type of forum - enough pros around who use the SW for "real" work.

Lost work (and time) because of crashes or hangups are certainly an issue.

At least it would be for me and so I really would bother documenting that kind of bugs and issues rather than moaning around in a very general way,grumbling about any crashes etc.

Will you get paid for this? Sure not by PTC. Will your efforts would at least pay off in the sense that PTC takes on the problem and solves it? I wouldn't bet on it but at least you had tried to do something to make the software better and an analysis of the problem may help you to avoid the situations the probem usually occurs. The bad thing is that, not under maintainance, you won't even be entitled to report a bug! PTC lets you pay for the privilege to do so!

So people use Mathcad for their daily work not because its a perfect software and not because it does ALL they want it to do and sure not because PTC is such a nice, cooperative company. They do it because after all Mathcad has its strenghts and merits for them they don't find combined that way in another software. People who use MC came to the conclusion that the bilance pro/con is positive - for them, which means it must not be so for you. Another reason can be that they are forced by their company to use the SW 😉

EDIT: Just checked it - you can still download MC14 M020 here http://www.ptc.com/support/mathcad_downloads.htm

ptc-5349040 · ‎Nov 02, 2013

Werner Exinger wrote:
Was just listing some points which may cause problems. And even if you have XP as OS I guess there are in the meantime a lot of updates installed (e.g. for the underlying dotNET 3.5) which MC14 wasn't aware of at those time).

Well, I gather its newly-introduced features shouldn't be able to cause a problem then!

Thanks for taking time to write in much detail. At the moment there are too many unknowns (and sw upgrades are subject to my company's rules anyway, which I'm not very familiar with yet).