Excellent article - exactly what we experience with our CAD software. Our company has thousands of seats of a well-known CAD package, spend millions on CAD development internally, and have a preferential relationship with the vendor; yet we still go through the same "daylight robbery" scenario that Bruce describes. Now we are trying to go paperless, we discover that our suppliers will have to pay $10000 for a bundle to let them _view_ annotations. I know some on this thread have stated "change vendor" - that isn't an option when you have terrabytes of data and the decision to use the new version was made as a "strategic decision" at a corporate level.... Thanks Bruce!

Comment on 'SC' review: By Brand I and S, did you mean Inventor and SolidWorks respectively. Good to know as a CAD user. It will be useful if you can help us understand your experience.

Very amusing, Bruce - and it's sure nice to see that you are still writing! Our user's conferences are not the same without "Virtual Iccon". :^) Looks like you've covered the best of the worst, but I have to say that some really good things have happended to the old software we were familiar with. Also have to take issue with your description of user's conferences - sure, there's waayyy too many managers and computer geeks, but it's getting more diverse, and where else can you grab a developer by the throat - errrr - talk face to face with - about your favorite issue?! Look forward to your next article.