PTC will loose another client

[spaco]

We paid our 2 licenses of Mathcad starting with 2008. Our current maintenance will expire in summer 2014.

We are using v15 because Prime is unusable, mostly because of GUI and not because of the missing features.

I saw today the PTC Mathcad Product Strategy at "Roadmap from PTC Mathcad Engage 2013" virtual event.

The presentation confirms that Prime 3 and Prime 4 GUI will be exactly the same as in Prime 2. This means at least another 2 years to pay for nothing.

Taking this into account we are forced to stop paying PTC for an unusable product.

PTC, will all due respect, if you want my money, do something. The GUI can be improved in a couple of weeks by a single person.

Best regards,

Virgil

[ValeryOchkov]

I also tried before to write angry letters about Mathcad fate in the hands of PTC.

But then I decided for myself that Mathcad is Mathcad and Prime is Prime... and calmed down.

It is still to be mad at the weather...

When we found out in 2006 that PTC had bought Mathsoft we all said in chorus - Mathcad came to an end (in Russian - Маткаду наступил пи**ец). But nothing - still alive bc.

[MikeArmstrong]

Prime is a work in progress. Prime 3.0 is a big improvement from version 2, but STILL not at the level of M15 in my opinion.

I would suggest sticking with M15 for the time being.

Mike

[spaco]

I have no problem that Prime is a work in progress and it doesn't have all features of v15.

The problem is that Prime GUI looks like it is made by 100 years old guy who spent the latest 90 years alone on a remote island.

A PTC representative said to me that the Prime GUI was made by a professional graphician. LOL.

[ValeryOchkov]

One person in Russia do not like Mathcad rather its price. And he made himself own Mathcad - see please http://smath.info

[rdelascasas]

Would not have been easier, instead of "invent the wheel with the Prime family" just keep improving Mathcad?

i have been using Mathcad since version 7 in 1996.

i cannot say that i am an expert as many of you on this forum, but i had to keep working with Mathcad 15 due to the same incompatibilities and problems that Prime has.

When i asked about this during the presentation of Prime 1.0, the only response that i obtained from PTC was something like, forget about Mathcad, take Prime or leave it.

PTC is acting like a dictatorship, after they acquired the right for Mathcad, Machiavelli said in his book "The Prince" something like : "If you want to be a good governor, as soon as you get to power change whatever is not good but do not touch what is working good. But if you want to be a dictator change everything the good and the bad things. That is what has happended with Mathcad, besides all the critics that the Prime family has received, PTC keeps trying to improve it, and still are not able to reach the level that we had reached with Mathcad 15.

In the capitalist system, usually, when a company wants to keep their clientel they do good things, PTC is ignoring all the critics and is very stubborn.

When i move to my new job last year and had to acquire Mathcad to keep working, they made me bought Prime 2.0 (that i have not used at all) to be able to have Mathcad 15M, that is the program that i am using.

This is outrageous.

But, I did not have choice, i have built an extense library of Mathcad files since 1996, and I was not able to change all these files for a new calculation program, so I have to follow their rules and acquire Prime 2.0 to have Mathcad 15m,

I hope that PTC read all these critics and do something for the supporters, that are us, who spend the money buying their programs.

Rogelio

[ValeryOchkov]

Rogelio de las Casas wrote:

Would not have been easier, instead of "invent the wheel with the Prime family" just keep improving Mathcad?

Easy to say - but it's hard (nearly impossible) to do. I found this out by talking personally with old (Mathcad) and new (Prime) developers. Mathcad 15 is fine but... was created with old tools.

But the problem is so.

PTC has main product Creo and main (nearly all) money from it. Mathcad is one... hobby of PTC For me too

And second!

New trademark of PTC:

Mathcad Prime

One same example from Microsoft.

Old Excel has simple tool for programming on BASIC in one separate sheet.

In modern Exsel you must use VBA and a lot of users can not do it and do not use it and use Excel without programming - this very usefull tools

[MikeArmstrong]

Easy to say - but it's hard (nearly impossible) to do. I found this out by talking personally with old (Mathcad) and new (Prime) developers. Mathcad 15 is fine but... was created with old tools.

But the problem is so.

PTC has main product Creo and main (nearly all) money from it. Mathcad is one... hobby of PTC For me too

What did the programmers actually say? Did they give you any information on where they see Prime in the future as the roadmap doesn't seem to replicate the current progress.

Mike

[RichardJ]

I've spoken to the programmers too. I can't tell you exactly what they said, but Valery is right. You can think about it like this though. The underlying math functions are a very small part of the total programming for Mathcad. They have all been implemented in Prime. What creates a lot of work is that the GUI is a live whiteboard. All the elements have to interact mathematically with all the others.

Having said that, I am very disappointed with the rate of progress with Prime. We still have a large number of completely missing features, many of the features we do have are deficient (e.g. graphs), loading older worksheets is excessively painful, saving a worksheet back to an older version is impossible....

Sigh

[MikeArmstrong]

Cheers for the insight – take a deep breath.

It is a shame how slow Prime is developing. At this rate we could be looking at Prime 6.0 before we get to M15.

Mike

[rdelascasas]

Valery,

it looks like you missed my point.

I have not seen any program, including Excel, where the new improve version does not permit that old version files can be easily open and work out in the new version.

Prime is almost a whole new story, and even being new is not able to include the existing capabilities of Mathcad 15. This is the point.

Do we have to wait 15 versions of Prime to get to where we were three or four years ago with Mathcad.

If Mathcad programmers were able to do what they did with "old tools", why they were not able to do better things with "new tools"? this is the question that all of us might be asking right now.

Again, i am not an advance expert, but even i was able to notice the lack of quality on the Prime family, and the wasting of time trying to fix my mathcad 15 files on Prime platform.

Rogelio

[Werner_E]

If Mathcad programmers were able to do what they did with "old tools", why they were not able to do better things with "new tools"?

I'm not sure but I guess that PTC doesn't have many of the "old" Mathsoft top programmers on their paylist anymore. Over the last years I got the impression that PTC tries to replace good programming by good(??) marketing. Its also obvious that Mathcad has low priority for PTC in every respect.

That said I am not sure if we will ever see P15 and if it would live up to MC15 then.

But as was already stated by others, some of us have less choice than others and will have to live with whatever PTC is willing to provide - at least for now.

[MikeArmstrong]

That's a good point. I believe PTC started from scratch and underestimated how long it would take to re-write Mathcad. While they have been developing Prime they have had to keep releasing the product or risk missing out on new customers.

Mike

[MikeArmstrong]

Prime is the future I'm afraid. We just have to hope Prime will at least replicate M15 soon.

Mike

[Raiko]

Hi Virgil,

I also watched the PTC event. So far PTC has made a compelling argument to use MathCad instead of a spreadsheet but has failed to prove that it has to be MC Prime 3.0. Apart from that the presentations were disappointing. The first one was more or less advertisement for allied signal and the best practices showed standard features of MathCad.

Don't get me wrong. I think that MC Prime 3 shows some very promissing ideas such as the data tables and mixed units arrays. However, unless it doesn't has the capabilities of MathCad 15 I don't see any reason to switch to Prime. The GUI is the least of my concerns even if it is substandard. I'm more troubled with the fact that PTC does not seem to listen but tries to use marketing skills instead of development tools to further and promote their product.

And I believe that Valerys advice is a good one.

Raiko

[ValeryOchkov]

Raiko Milanovic wrote:

Hi Virgil,

I think that MC Prime 3 shows some very promissing ideas such as the data tables and mixed units arrays

See please http://communities.ptc.com/polls/1141

[Raiko]

Hello Valery,

I knew that MC Prime 1.0 is deficient, but I wasn't aware of that for Prime 3.0. I somehow hoped that most problems would have been ironed out.

So let's see how Prime 4 and 5 will do.

Raiko

[MikeArmstrong]

So let's see how Prime 4 and 5 will do.

Raiko

We've been saying that for a few versions now.

Mike

[ValeryOchkov]

[ViacheslavMezen]

While you wait for new versions of MPxxxx, some people are writing instruments themselves. I have long dreamed of drawing implicit functions in Mathcad. Tired and wrote this feature by myself.

[RichardJ]

Compared to Prime, it is amazing how advanced SMath Studio is, given the relative size of the resources that created them (or perhaps it's amazing how non-advanced Prime is?). Unfortunately, last time I checked there were still too many limitations in SMath for me to switch. Maybe one day though

[ViacheslavMezen]

Yes, it's true, there are many problems, but we are working on it

Now you can create stand-alone applications based on the documents. I have serious doubts that it will ever be in MPxxxx.

[RichardJ]

Now you can create stand-alone applications based on the documents. I have serious doubts that it will ever be in MPxxxx.

That is really great! Excellent work! I will have to go and get the latest version!

Maybe it will be in MPxxxx, where xxxx tends to infinity

The last time I looked the single biggest issue for me was that there were no implicit vector or matrix operations. Asidde from the speed hit that creates, it means I can't write vector or matrix operations in standard math notation. From a documentation standpoint, that is a problem.

[OscarJ.]

Good morning,

I saw the post regarding SMath, and I decided to try it: Amazing job!

Congratulations!

Regards,

Oscar J.

[Raiko]

Splendid!

Have to give it a try!

Raiko

[ptc-3182001]

They already lost me 3 years ago. Their licensing fees per annum for a single home user (not a corp or professional) are astronomical. It took thesecats ove a year to finally recognize that I had purchased Mathcad 15 under an offer during a conference they hosted and in their eStore environment and I spent the year arguing tha they never provided the license info to acivate the product. Then I was sent around the proverbial redtape racetrack proving it,

I let my subscription lapse. I do not like Mathcad Prime x.x of any version compared to Mathcad 14 and 15. Because of this, I cannot move my software (rightfully paid for by me) to a more modern platform due to the locking of the activation to the machine it is on. If I wish to migrate, I get the privalege of having to subscribe again at $250-$300 to just simply do that. I have never needed their support before and do not need it now. I simply want to move my copy to a more modern PC. Afterall, there are no machines guaranteed for a lifetime!

So, as much as I like the original MathSoft versions of Mathcad from version 3 thru 14, I hve decided that Mr. Big Pants, PTC can just stick the product right up their rectal torus and have gone to Wolfram Mathmatica ... not a nice pretty exchange; but, certainly not filled with extortionist activities that PTC treats their home users with.

-- Glenn Kelly

[RichardJ]

You don't need a subscription to move MC15 to a new PC, although I have heard of reps telling customers that (i.e. lying to them) so that they can get the extra money.