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[Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?
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rsjsouza:

--- Quote from: joeqsmith on May 29, 2022, 12:47:07 am ---
--- Quote from: HighVoltage on May 28, 2022, 06:13:36 pm ---I used the Norton Commander every day as my file handling tool in those days.
How amazing this tool was and nothing came close !

--- End quote ---

I was using something called XTree and continued to use it long after Windows came out (when windows ran under DOS  :palm:).

--- End quote ---
Xtree (and later XTree Gold) and its competitor PCTools were excellent file browsers - light years ahead of the crap File Explorer of Windows 2.x/3.x/95/98

I was never a big fan of Norton Commander on the DOS days, but nowadays I use a File Explorer utility that is similar in shape, named FreeCommander. Quite excellent for the price.

Oops, sorry for derailing the thread: we are here to bash software, not praise it.  :-DD
joeqsmith:
"... not praise it."
I think I still have the manual still on my bookshelf for Xtree Gold.   Didn't they change something in the Gold version that screwed up the secrete sauce? 

Thinking about their UI, back in those early days, I was writing my .COM programs in assembler and later in C.  It seems like I had some software from MagnaCarta that allowed me to use the color monitor and get some of those fancy exploding dialog boxes and such.   I had a math library from a company called MIX that I used.    Both were very low cost for us hobbyists. 

Really, thinking back, outside of some of the very early software I don't remember too many problems.   I used (still do) FPGAs and when Altera came out with Quartus I was beta testing it.  Their applications engineers came for a visit so I could demonstrate that it could not build a simple NAND gate!  :-DD

We used to use Sun and Apollos and were on the hunt for a better simulator.  We went to one of the major software companies to have a look at their tools.  I had prepared a schematic just in case they asked us for a circuit, which to my surprise, they did.   So they enter my trojan horse and I provide them with some details on how to run it.   Core dump!  Took down the whole system.   :-DD   They were upset and of course asked me details about it and I explained how I had simulated that same circuit that day with PSPICE at $3000 a copy.   If you played at all with those work stations, you know it wasn't going to be cheap.  That may have been Mentor. 
Doctorandus_P:
EdWin was probably my second worst (after windoze).

It was a PCB program I bought back in the '90-ies and after a while I discovered that it did not (always) remove a connection from the netlist if you deleted a wire between schematic symbols. That was an immediate one way ticket to the garbage bin.
RedLion:

--- Quote from: VK3DRB on May 25, 2022, 08:19:01 am ---
--- Quote from: ajb on May 19, 2022, 03:55:04 pm ---Wow, I came here to say Altium.  I haven't dabbled in the others, but my impression has been that they all tend to have a worse user experience or are missing a lot of the graphical control options that Altium has (even if most of what Altium has is half-baked and half-broken), which is part of what has me still putting up with it.

--- End quote ---

Altium is WAY overpriced on it subscription costs  :--. The cost has increased a lot over the years. It is now $A 2,400 for a one year's subscription. I reluctantly renewed, but this will be the last time. They should give a $100 discount to a user for every verified new bug he reports.

--- End quote ---

Mate, you haven't seen the price politics of Mentor CAD. Yes, Altium is the Ferrari of EDAs. It's expensive to buy and maintain, but it gets the job done really well (even if you don't like the UI that much).

Mentor Xpedition is more like your pre-war Rolls Royce. The cost is insane (we're talking 100 kilobucks PER LICENSE, plus tens of thousands for the annual "support package", which is a laptop in a closet somewhere), it is slow to start, slow to run and it breaks down a lot (I just had 4 crashes in 45 minutes because I dared try to rename a net).

Plus the UI is from 1995 and not customizable at all, eg. the hotkeys to rotate a component are Ctrl+Shift+R. Note that Ctrl+R, Shift+R, or just R, are not assigned to anything. Doesn't matter, get f'kin used to it because that's the hotkeys, end of. Of yourse, the designators and properties all rotate along, so you have to rotate each of them back afterwards if you like reading the right way up.
Halcyon:

--- Quote from: HighVoltage on May 28, 2022, 06:13:36 pm ---I used the Norton Commander every day as my file handling tool in those days.
How amazing this tool was and nothing came close !

--- End quote ---

I was an X-Tree Gold kind of guy.
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