[sdiy] Free pcb software - Where's the catch?

[ASSI]

On Wednesday 12 March 2003 13:25, spr at spridley.freeserve.co.uk wrote:
> http://www.autotraxeda.com/
>
> This looks too good to be true.  Has anyone tried it?

I finally found the time to try it. It definitely has potential and 
some good ideas, but certainly isn't there yet, there are too many 
obvious bugs. So I'd say the catch is that you are playing the guinea 
pig for the developers, which may end up charging for the product when 
they decide it's time for Version 2.

For starters it didn't really find enough space on my 800x600 laptop 
screen (I somewhat expected that), but then it did not get much better 
at 1280x1024 on an external monitor either. Some of the controls don't 
have the scrollbars necessary to get all the contents (in other parts 
of the program they are there). The selection of parts in the library 
is somewhat questionable, but that would fix itself easily. Then it 
decided to lock my computer hard in the first five minutes of me trying 
to use it and I really don't like that. This is all in stark contrast 
to their own description (or should I say hype?) about the program, so 
I have to question their ability to follow through on their own vision.

The 1.61 AutoTRAX for DOS that you can download from www.protel.com on 
the other hand works in the DOS box of Win98 and even used the 800x600 
resolution when asked. I'll have to try it again under WINE on Linux. 
However it feels like you've fallen through a time-crack, I think I 
still prefer Eagle...


Achim.
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