User Perception of Activation and Licencing

StuartBruff · ‎Nov 22, 2009

Activation and licencing of Mathcad is a topic
that arises in the 3 main websites that I look at:
Collaboratory, PTC forum, Eng-Tips forum.

I seem to be noticing more comments along the
lines of "I am going to...", "I would like to..."
dump Mathcad.

Eg,

"I just tried to re-install Mathcad 13 on WinXP
SP3. It appeared to install correctly but when I
started up the program it said I had an invalid
license. I am going to call PTC tomorrow to see
why my license number will not work.
What a pain. I wish there was a translator to
convert Mathcad files to wxMaxima, Maple or
Mathematica. A lot of our intellectual property
is in Mathcad13 format. I can't go back to
Mathcad 11. Fortunate there are other people at
work that have Mathcad but I have over 1000 files
of about 6-10 pages. That is a lot to
convert"

I do hope somebody at PTC, who actually thinks
Mathcad has a future, is paying attention to these
gripes; they may be few but they're what other
people see and may well assume to be the tip of
the iceberg ... and a dense iceberg at that.

Somebody else might just perceive a market for a
worksheet converter.

Stuart

AlvaroDíaz · ‎Nov 22, 2009

I use the g, h-index (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index) and related numbers to show wy some thinkers, like Althusser, who are in all bibliographies in educational sciences have a less impact than others comparing different sources of information (Google Scholar, general purpose search engines and others) and learning university bibliography uploaded into teachers pages - via a statical querying.

Also, for those teachers that includes Althusser in their bibliographies, I was envoy an questionnaire to eval if it's true that they show him in class.

So, I extended the analysis for other areas that the original purpose of the index. I think that the same thing can be done between the 4M; in this case probably restricted in first instance to those two that have not common meaning.

But without analyse too much, with simple searching in Google:

matlab:.........5,790,000
mathcad:..........777,000

Correlates very well with the relationship between

Chomsky:........1,450,000
Althusser:........182,000

A plausible declination because originally publish in French can be estimated regarding some index from others non english authors:

"Paulo Freire":...670,000
(Here excluding Freire's that aren't Paulo)

Thesis to prove is: even academic bibliography index are good, a temporal declination in general searching engines ensure less influence. Learned as: a modest marketplace, if the subject it's a software.

Regards. Alvaro.

ValeryOchkov · ‎Nov 23, 2009

But without analyse too much, with simple searching in Google:

matlab:.........5,790,000
mathcad:..........777,000

Sorry,
but Mathcad is one Engineering Calculator
and Matlab is one programer language.
Why must we compare?

Val
http://twt.mpei.ac.ru/ochkov/v_ochkov.htm

StuartBruff · ‎Nov 23, 2009

On 11/23/2009 2:41:37 AM, VFO wrote:
But without analyse too much, with simple
searching in Google:

matlab:.........5,790,000
mathcad:..........777,000

Sorry,
but Mathcad is one Engineering Calculator
and Matlab is one programer language.
Why must we compare?

Because more Engineers use Matlab than use Mathcad
and it's made for Engineers to use directly.

Furthermore, Mathematica and Maple appear to be
making inroads into the Engineering market.

If PTC want Mathcad to exist as a viable
mainstream product, it has to address the items
that cause negative perceptions. And if the
'negatives' are to remain, the positives have got
to swamp them into insignificance - which they
don't in the eyes of several users.

Stuart

AlvaroDíaz · ‎Nov 23, 2009

Engineering books came all now not with an "Software appendix" but with examples solved with software tools distributed into the examples and chapter problems.

Sure, counting how many books are published, counting also how many number at each edition, and counting how many exercises are solved (w/o end chapter problems) using each software (includin minitab, ees, excel and others) gives the information about which software go to be used.

Counting, counting, counting ... If there are not enough databases, can be done with statiscal methods and count with thingers (across the papers).

Probability it is the science of the measure, while statics it's over the same domain, but it's the art to do this.

Regards. Alvaro.

ptc-1368288 · ‎Nov 23, 2009

>Probability it is the science of the measure, while statics it's over the same domain, but it's the art to do this< [Alvaro]
____________________________

And there are 3 kinds of lies:

1. there are lies
2. damned lies
3. statistics !

jmG

ptc-1368288 · ‎Nov 23, 2009

>If PTC want Mathcad to exist as a viable
mainstream product, it has to address the items
that cause negative perceptions. And if the
'negatives' are to remain, the positives have got
to swamp them into insignificance - which they
don't in the eyes of several users.

Stuart <<br> ____________________________

That's what it is !

And it seems so to me if all my work sheets and all those from collabs are to be dead for ever or like you say/suggest up until PTC returns to Mathcad/Maple 11. I think we should have a Mathcad Russian version with more Maple content.

That my so loved serial definition:
[a b]:=[pi 1.23456789] does not work in 14
is a glorified idiotics, simply.

Engineers must be efficient and productive,
and their work traceable for public safety.

I was wondering who fired the other:
PTC firing Maple or vice versa ?

jmG

mzeftel · ‎Nov 23, 2009

When I search in Google, I get:

Mathcad 2,360,000 not 77,000.
Matlab 5,890,000

Mona

RichardJ · ‎Nov 23, 2009

On 11/23/2009 1:40:56 PM, MonaZ wrote:
>When I search in Google, I
>get:
>
>Mathcad 2,360,000 not 77,000.
>Matlab 5,890,000
>
>Mona

Alvaro got 777,000, not 77,000.

When I searched just now I got the same numbers you did. When I searched yesterday though I got 2,380,000 for Mathcad and 17,300,000 for matlab (about the same ratio Alvaro got, but different numbers). How come it changes so much?

Richard

AlvaroDíaz · ‎Nov 23, 2009

On 11/23/2009 2:12:26 PM, rijackson wrote:
>When I searched just now I got the same numbers you did. When I searched yesterday though I got 2,380,000 for Mathcad and 17,300,000 for matlab (about the same ratio Alvaro got, but different numbers). How come it changes so much?

When I learn about the "new search engine" from google I understand somethings about how google works, and the difference between others (altavista and yahoo basically).

But now I don't understand how google works, in special why it change the word(s) for the searching. In theory "mathcad" must to be less occurences than mathcad, but ...

------------

It's evident that in spanish google search another thing. Any serious study must to check the search engine, and it's clear that Google has be changing a lot.

Regards. Alvaro.

ptc-1368288 · ‎Nov 23, 2009

From once an hardly equivalent to Halta Vista, Google acquired the Montr�al made extraordinary web engine "Kopernic", that boosted Google to about the sole web engine. Mathcad changed spelling through the years. There are also over a millions under Mathsoft and that was different than Mathcad as a high level consulting entity. How do you account the "3.2 millions Mathcad Collaboratory entries". If you don't have the number of PC's running Matlab and the number of PC's running Mathcad, what kind of statistics to apply based on unknown web visits per party ? What a web visit means: Matlab users having greater problem than Mathcad users ?

jmG

VladimirN · ‎Aug 18, 2011

Here are the results we have today (using the search engine Google.com):

MATLAB: 57,600,000 results

Mathcad: 7,070,000 results

Mathcad Prime: 833,000 results