Since there seem to be plenty of stories on here about the problems with PTC's support for MathCAD, I figured I'd relate my experience today that was overall positive: I had previously installed release 14 -- a single-user license copy -- on a laptop last year, and after getting a new laptop for Christmas, re-formatted the old laptop's hard drive and installed MathCAD on the new one. As many of you could probably guess, when I then tried to activate MathCAD over the Internet it complained that I'd already done so and I should contact customer service. That was about two weeks ago; I sent them some e-mail about the problem but didn't get a response (wrong e-mail address, perhaps?). So today I figured I'd finally track down a person at PTC and get it settled. It does take some effort to dig out up PTC's phone number (indeed, I find in incredible that when you click on the "How to contact us... by phone..." link you're given a SIXTY PAGE PDF file all about PTC's various support options... and eventually you find towards the back what the phone numbers are). Anyway, I called them, and I was on hold for a good 15 minutes before speaking to a support person. I gave him a 15-second description of the problem, and he immediately offered to e-mail me a new license file -- no arguments about having not properly uninstalled MathCAD from the old laptop or similar. I gave him the new laptop's hard drive's volume ID and my product code, the license file showed up shortly thereafter, and all was well. So I guess the point is that -- while PTC seems overly strict about licensing (ONE activation before having to call!?) and makes it rather more difficult than it should be to contact them, once you manage to contact the right person the fixes appear to be effective; overall I'm happy. ---Joel Koltner
