I had promised not to talk about this again and find myself regretting those words and posting again on this. Todays events in my shop reminded me in ways that could not be ignored of the value of continuing to talk about the terrible future awaiting anyone who is foolish enough to be subscription only for their business CAD and CAM life blood.
Sitting here today waiting for the latest developmental download to Inventor pro HSM. While I am waiting though I want you who are thinking of buying into subscription only CAD or CAM to get a little taste of what is headed your way. Remember the Marketing babblespeak of easy self updating IT free bliss promised by these shills for greater fees from you to them and loss of all control over your data. Of course this is not my problem because I have a permanent seat and can uninstall a version when I wish as well as install. Thank you very much marketing goof balls but I think I am adult enough and responsible enough to determine what works best for me. I sure don’t need you to charge me extra over time and be subjected to the reality of the pain your greedy desires will inflict upon all who enter. Fusion 360 looks like a genuine value but the expenses for Inventor subs anything are ludicrous over time. Fusions future bargain status is in question though as the ancillary charges will soon be forthcoming while you “rent” server farm stuff from you know who.
Today while using developmental build 115 from 1-12-16 I can’t finish a drill path. Nope, not gonna happen. Get to calculate, hit OK and the program does the magic disappearing act. After six times of variations I conclude it is well broken. So I go and post this problem at the CAM forum and less than 15 minutes later I get a response. It seems that this quickly became a known problem and 0n 1-15-16 build 117 was released to fix this. Now remembering the extraordinarily painful days of CAMWorks for Solid Edge I can only say that the fix was quick. Generally I have been told developmental builds are pretty robust and over this past year my experience has borne this out. Autodesk does warn you though that only official builds are for production.
But the last current recommended for production version is from 4-13-15 and there have been 14 developmental builds since then and only one has given me a problem. So what has happened here? If I was a subscriber I would have to wait and wait and wait for a new current build? Been a lot of months now. Or would I have a forced update that was buggy and have to wait for the patch to be issued for the problem. Now remember the problem might be unique to my setup and not a developmental or current release problem as much as a conflict with the way I have things set up on my end. Now what? Who is going to make my stuff work now? Wellllll you know with a permanent seat I just stay with what works and beta test on my own to verify quality outside of my workaday income earning area with my take home laptop version that comes with my permanent seat. I DO NOT have to ever suffer from this with a permanent seat. Auto updates with 115 would have caused significant problems until 117 was released. I love HSM and with my permanent seat expect to be well satisfied for years to come. But I want it my way which is to choose how I interact with my software vendor and I choose permanent seat over subscription chattel.
Can we talk about how robust your internet connection is here too since this is relevant to this whole kooky cloud only thing these people want us to devolve into over time?
I am like a TON of you around the world that will never have internet speeds that will make the cloud work faster than I can do it myself. With the exception I suppose of FEA or rendering if you care to put your critical intellectual property out on the unsecure web. I am lucky to get 80KBS and even luckier if the connection is not often broken.
I am going to build my next workstation. Intel 5930 CPU, server quality board with overclocking to probably 4.2 or 3GHZ. 32 gig of 3200 ram, water-cooled with at least a Quadro K2200 with a PCIE SSD main drive and multi terabyte secondary backup drive for under $2,000.00. You can build this all day long and cut your cost in half from the manufacturers. Just how many simultaneous internet connections would I have to have to equal this astounding computing power on my desktop? 6GPS buss speed on this upcoming workstation would require 6 GB divided by 80KBS would be 75,000 concurrent internet connections. Do the math. Dare I say in-house also equals secure and constant backups if needed are cheapo to? Priced any 5 terabyte hard drives and soon to be 10 lately?
Please explain again to me dear corporate CPA MBA Barracudas just how wonderful subscription only and the cloud is going to be for me. Just be aware that after years of subjection to Democrat PC correct insanity and Rino Republican elect me lies I look behind the curtain before I buy. Subscription only stinks just as bad as the lies and deceptions emanating from Washington and has the same ruling class elitist mentality. Maybe it is a symptom of getting older but I find my patience with people who lie to me with insider jargon word combinations they think are fooling me into believing their deceptions does not exist anymore.
Permanent seats and TRUMP BABY!!!
Machined Audio Horn Lens 
Hi Dave,
In my experience its better to only overclock a little -say 4ghz- because getting 32gb of ram to play nicely at speed on the bus can be difficult. Depends a bit on the architecture though. The more memory you stick in there the more fussy it seems to be IMO. I have experience of 32gb DDR3-2400 only running at 1833 and with custom ram timings even though the mobo was a decent one. Playing around with the timings and stress testing ended up being a time consuming chore. 32gb will probably need to run at a slower rate than you anticipate so that its stable but overall the reduction in speed from being clocked slower is probably only a few percent in practical use. Don’t just buy the fastest (more expensive) memory and think you can fit it and it will automatically all be good. Make sure you buy a matched kit of 32gb too don’t put 2×16 in there or whatever. Read the reviews and forums first to see what actually works for people. Happy building 🙂
Hi Neil,
This is new territory for me. I wanted to have a PCIE SSD along with a CPU I could overclock and my traditional go to which was Dell refurbished had nothing. Even new they insist on Win10 to get the PCIE so I decided to do it myself this time. Looking into overclockers.com website a bit among others because I want Win7 and speed and few workstation builders offer this. Puget Systems does but look at the price tag. I have no idea why big builders went completely around the 5820,5930 and 5960 CPU’s. These guys building workstations out of the 5930 are getting stellar numbers with reliable stable overclocks. The 5930 seems to be the sweet spot price and capability wise. Yeah the RAM might not be worthwhile but the price tag for faster potential at least is not to much more than fast is.
Looking to build a good fast system to take me through 2020 with Win7 and since Micro$oft is going to force most Skylake and on adopters to go Win10 only this seems to be the best bet. Another reason to drop SE over this to. They are going to force users to switch to Win10 after ST9 with three years left for Win7 Pro. Money money money and they both don’t get more of mine until I have to if ever. By 2020 I will be 66 and I may never buy another thing after that for my business as my work will mostly be in-house with equipment I already own that works just fine. I will just keep my money and my curmudgeon anti cloud non-subscription ways here in my shop earning a living. Being subjected to changing software icons and workflows just to look new with no user benefit to me will be a thing of the past. I could work for the next 15 years and not spend another dime with anyone and be alright. I am getting to be just like a lot of ex SW users I have contact with 😉
By the way, have you tried Win10 and do you see any reason to go there unless forced to?
Hi Dave ,
My impression is that because of a melt down of the financial system we might all be working less than we would like to for years to come, or longer than we anticipate. It seems likely that pensions will be a casualty of the debt implosion or largely reduced so that ought to be a factor in your thinking.
While I agree the crooked software companies have now largely succeeding in making you to pay up continually for little actual practical gain and there is a chunk of money to be saved by not being herded into that blind servitude, I would be a little shy of saying I will be able to avoid some expenditure entirely in the future.
At this juncture though I think it makes sense to sit on tools you are happy with and know how to work effectively with. With so much uncertainty keeping your money in your pocket will allow some flexibility in your affairs or for emergencies. You can re-join the tech race down the line if you have to and when the change actually amounts to something worthwhile.
I cant really see anything compelling about win10. It seems to be like the Office ribbon in that its largely a UI makeover for the sake of having something ‘new’ to sell and the actual meaningful improvements seem very few, As you point out though they have incorporated support for newer technology like PCIE SSD which is worthwhile tech I think, but not absolutely necessary. If I was building new I would go for it. It seems much better than win8 anyhow.
What I don’t like however is the spyware they seem to have incorporated in win10 and I have a nagging feeling the free upgrade deal is the thin end of an extractive business model. Personally I really dislike this covert capture of customers and having no boundaries to what I consider mine.
The only thing that is attractive to me about upgrading my win7 machines for free to Win10 is the extended life support. Having said that it is going to be a hassle for me to actually do the upgrade when my systems are working just fine already and I suspect some things I use are going to break despite what the upgrade advisor report says. At this time I am undecided. I might only upgrade one machine just to keep the window open as it were. At the same time I am mindful I have an old XP machine sitting unused in the corner that does still works fine albeit fairly slowly but is now largely obsolete due to factors outside my control even if I wanted to use it. Hmmm.. The march of technology is kind of a double sided sword isn’t it?
The chance of a meltdown is real even if Trump gets in and for sure if he does not. I watched Detroit turn into a hell hole before I left forever in 1981. People who have never seen a major city destroy itself can’t comprehend what I personally witnessed. It also happens to countries too when socialists run out of other peoples money to plunder. The plans are already made to steal the last real store of private wealth in the world and it is pension funds and Europe is going to lead the way here. Think Greece on a large scale. Perilous times indeed and I wonder if this is what it was like before WW1 and 2.
That was my thought with Win10 to. More about forcing people into something Microsoft can monetize like Google has done than ground breaking improvements users want and need. If my computer wizard says I should go with Win10 for the PCIE I may reconsider but it will stay offline. All I see when I look around is way to many companies that want to enslave people and not win them by merit. GM even tried to make it illegal for car owners to fix their own vehicles here a while back. They wanted to force people to only use GM service centers. With GM prices I would imagine to. All about corporate income people can’t get out of or avoid.
Unfortunately I think this next crisis will lead to severe hardship around the world and for a prolonged period. Frustration may degenerate into or be diverted into some misplaced global conflict although it shouldn’t because we know what the reasons are for our troubles and who the culprits are. Its up to the people not to get embroiled in mass violence against each other as some sort of gladiatorial resolution to our differences as we have previously and go after the root cause of these failings. We desperately need reason to prevail for once. Who can hope to emerge the victor of a nuclear exchange? Aside from the US getting itself in a debt pickle with foolishly unbridled consumer spending if China wasn’t well undercutting everyone else’s capability to have viable industry and hence have balanced budgets things would correct. I think that going back to Japan putting US steel mills out of business and the disregard of intellectual property and environmental standards in China there has been a failure of governments to respond to and responsibly manage the emergence of other countries into the developed world. Instead of raising everyone to a desirable standard of living the new success has come at the expense of those who made the progress in the first place. Because the industrialisation of these nations has been largely centrally planned it has been at an unnatural rate that demands success and rudely displaces at the expense of the existing. Really it is a bubble that is prone to a bust and taking everything else with it that wasn’t ruined when it was blown. Presently the US has been rendered redundant by these conditions as has Europe and it even affects us way down here in the South Pacific too as an outpost of western civilisation.
Anyhow this isn’t on topic on your blog but I do hold out hope that because people can interact with each other through the internet in spite of their governments shortcomings there might be a global accord to share prosperity around some.
BTW win7 support ends Jan 2020 and win10 in Oct 2025 so that gives you an extra 5 years use of the same hardware if you had to by taking advantage of the free upgrade and no doubt offers some flexibility as far as CADCAM software goes if your plans had to vary.
A recent article that may be helpful re speeds
http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/222483-how-much-ram-do-you-need-should-you-upgrade-it-and-will-it-speed-up-your-pc
http://www.overclockers.com/forums is another one with gobs of info on every aspect of building and tinkering with PC’s