I feel a rant coming on, but I’m going to try to control it as best I can…
I read a forum post earlier where a person was upset that their hardware wasn’t supported by the newest version of SolidWorks. Said hardware is about 10 years old and no longer made. They felt that SolidWorks had kicked “a whole bunch of users and their computers to the curb”. First, I’m compelled to question the validity of that statement. A whole bunch of users? Really? It was my understanding that the average engineering computer was upgraded about every 3 years (+/- 1 year). Is this wrong? Even if I’m off by two years, doesn’t it stand to reason that the vast majority of engineering computers have hardware that is less than 8 years old?
None of that is the point I was trying to make, though. My point is this, does it not seem asinine to expected software to not progress at a rate that almost equals that of hardware? Why would any software manufacturer decide it’s better to hinder their software’s potential performance so they can continue to support out-of-date hardware? This makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. I can’t think of a single software company that doesn’t want to be cutting edge. To do this, they need to take advantage of all that a computer’s hardware offers, old hardware be damned.
How about we go a little further? If your company is still using 10 year old systems for their engineering needs, what does that say about the company, and their want to stay current and competitive? Prior to coming back to work here, I had a couple of interviews. At both of them, one of the questions I asked was about their PCs. My mentality was that if their systems were up to snuff, then they, the company, wanted to be competitive and were willing to make the necessary investments to do so. If I’d have been told that they were PIII with 1Gb RAM, I’d have just said thanks but no thanks.
Outside of easy file sharing, no one forces you to move up to the newest version of SolidWorks, it’s your choice. In making that choice, it’s your responsibility to make sure that your system is still within spec. Don’t go blaming SolidWorks, or any other software manufacturer, if you’re behind the times. That, too, was your choice.
</rant>
