Re: Home Use License

prop_design · ‎Sep 05, 2020

So, I just noticed Matlab has a home use license for $149 usd. Maplesoft has a home use license for $239 usd. Mathcad has no home use license at all. This really sucks. I'm retired and would like to get a Mathcad home use license. Also, I wish you would put classic Mathcad in the store. Have a home use license for just classic Mathcad. That would be ideal. Or at least make it clear in the store that if you buy Prime you can get classic Mathcad. I hardly ever use Mathcad, so buying a commercial license makes no sense at all.

also hope classic Mathcad will get better image import. it's horrible right now.

Fred_Kohlhepp · ‎Sep 07, 2020

Well, there's good news and bad news. (Or is that bad news and worse news?)

I retired too, in 2018, so I lost the corporate account affiliation that allowed me to access Mathcad on my home computer. I got the name "John Shannon," on a web chat with PTC. (No, I can't remember how I launched the web chat.) Mr. Shannon graciously replied to my email inquiry:

Licenses of Mathcad come with Mathcad 14 and 15 so you would be covered on that front. And yes, we do have a retiree license that is less than 50% the cost of a commercial license (same functionality).

Professional license à $630/year

Retiree license à $295/year

So you can (for $300/year) have full Mathcad capacity.

That was the worse news. (I can't justify $300/year for what I'm using Mathcad for.)

The good news is that Prime Express (the "reader" Prime defaults to without a license) is fairly reminiscent of early Mathcad "classic." Some of us old dogs are developing replacements for what has been disabled. (Quick, how do you calculate the mean of a vector?) There are no symbolics, and no programming (it's amazing what you can do with the one "if" statement that's left,) but it's still a fairly powerful tool. And it's free. Download the one month trial and you have Prime.

prop_design · ‎Sep 07, 2020

hi fred,

thanks for the info. i wasn't aware of the retiree license. the sales person who contacted me didn't mention it.

i tried prime express and it was fine at first. then they watermarked the crap out of it and had no way to bring it back to classic mathcad. so i had to spend a bunch of time re-creating files in classic. so i'm not going to mess with prime express again.

unfortunately for ptc there is an adequate freeware that i can use instead. i would have like to just keep using classic mathcad, if they fixed the picture import.

Fred_Kohlhepp · ‎Sep 07, 2020

i tried prime express and it was fine at first. then they watermarked the crap out of it

Prime 4.0 Express has most (all?) of the features of 6.0 Express except the watermark diagonally across the page.

StuartBruff · ‎Mar 15, 2021

@Fred_Kohlhepp wrote:

Well, there's good news and bad news. (Or is that bad news and worse news?)

I retired too, in 2018, so I lost the corporate account affiliation that allowed me to access Mathcad on my home computer. I got the name "John Shannon," on a web chat with PTC. (No, I can't remember how I launched the web chat.) Mr. Shannon graciously replied to my email inquiry:

Licenses of Mathcad come with Mathcad 14 and 15 so you would be covered on that front. And yes, we do have a retiree license that is less than 50% the cost of a commercial license (same functionality).

Professional license à $630/year

Retiree license à $295/year

So you can (for $300/year) have full Mathcad capacity.

That was the worse news. (I can't justify $300/year for what I'm using Mathcad for.)

Sadly, Fred, I'm in the same boat as you. I might have been able to justify $300 on a one-off purchase, with occasional upgrades, but an annual licence basis is out of the question. I guess one option is to take a local, Mathcad-eligible STEM course and get it for the student price ....

Stuart

Fred_Kohlhepp · ‎Mar 15, 2021

I guess I'm rethinking this too!

Is it worth a dollar a day to have a fully functional Mathcad?

Plus, it's kind of fun--trying to trick free Mathcad into being more than a free reader.

StuartBruff · ‎Mar 15, 2021

@Fred_Kohlhepp wrote:

Is it worth a dollar a day to have a fully functional Mathcad?

According to She Who Must Be Obeyed ... No. 😞

I had to be ultra-inventive just to sneak a Raspberry Pi Pico past her.

Maybe if Mathcad could run natively under macOS, I might be able to convince myself it's what I wanted for my birthday or Christmas ...

Plus, it's kind of fun--trying to trick free Mathcad into being more than a free reader.

Yes, it is. However, some of the recursive equations I end up with are mind-bogglingly long, and start looking too much like Excel formulae for my insanity. I am proud to say that some of them are WLRN (Write Luckily, Read Never) - ie, it's pure happenstance that I haven't got a paste or nesting error in them. Others are just WTRN (Write Tediously, Read Never). I sort of know what I'm doing at the time, but no amount of comments or documentation ever casts a future light on their design or implementation. I often find myself wishing for just one little local variable ...

Cheers,

Stuart

LucMeekes · ‎Sep 07, 2020

I'd like to add that the root function is another valuable asset still usable in Prime Express, in case you need to (numerically) solve an equation.

By the way, as far as I know, if you buy a Prime license, it's equally valid for classic Mathcad (15), at no extra cost. The point is, you can't buy Prime anymore, all you can do is subscribe to a yearly license.

Oh, and don't expect ANY development by PTC to occur on classic Mathcad.

Success!

Luc

prop_design · ‎Sep 07, 2020

hi luc,

thanks for the info. i missed the 'subscription' part. i refuse to pay for software via subscription. that is an idiotic thing for the customer but great for the companies. so that's a deal breaker.

-MFra- · ‎Sep 07, 2020

Hi,

The user is considered by PTC (but I think this is true for many goods on the market) to be more and more "a cash cow" annually and in some cases monthly.

prop_design · ‎Sep 07, 2020

very true, it is. but that doesn't mean i'm going to participate in it 🙂