I'm still here and thinking about 2007

You all can't get rid of me that easily. J/K  Sorry I've need to take a break on the postings.

2007's been out for a while now and yet we still haven't upgraded.  Some of you are asking why not and while others are asking how do make the determination to upgrade. Typically we like to stay on the 1 to 2 SP lag.  And if everyone did this no bugs would be reported & fixed until SP 3.  So, I say Thanks You to those who make the plunge earlier.  SP 2.0 came out about 2 weeks ago now. Most part the reviews I've read about 2007 in general have been very positive like Ricky Jordan's blog:  http://www.rickyjordan.net/2006/11/sp_20_is_out.html  and even Matt has a somewhat postive tone about 2007 http://designsmarter.typepad.com/mattlombard/tech_tips/index.html

So I still really haven't answer either question. For the why, at this point it is mostly historical reasons and probably being overly cautious.  The beta testing wasn't as broad in the beginning and there wasn't as many users out there to report problems.  Now I hear more about many people upgrading very close to the time when they get their disks and not having too many problems.

To determine when to make the switch we look at the state of our projects.  It's never a good time to have a possible slow down, but there are better times than others.  We look at the major and critical project schedules to make this determination.  We also look at how much SolidWorks has changed.  Is the interface different enough that people are going to have trouble jumping over to it, if they haven't gone to upgrade training?  And are there new features in the software that would really help us out?

We have a lot of licenses.  It takes a while to do the install.  Because the files aren't backwards compatible, we need to have time to do a back up and the install on everyone's computer at the same time.  This grantees that the switch must be done over a weekend or holiday.  I'm not going to go through the best practices for installing a new version of SolidWorks because there are many good articles out there on the newsgroups, SolidWorks' web page and other blogs (again Ricky Jordan has a post on this subject).

Finally, I look at a training schedule for everyone.  Whether they go through the what's new on their own, we do something in house or go to the VAR's class, I think it's really important to do and to do it within a few days of the install date.  It's often difficult to get everyone to take the time for this, but we do our best.

Comments

[matt]

EVEN Matt has a somewhat positive tone about 2007? Wow, it must be really good then!

Hmmm. Well, maybe I deserve that.

There is always good news about new releases. Unfortunately, there is always also bad news about new releases too. The great news is that I very rarely crash in 07, even doing the convoluted testing kind of work that I tend to be doing lately. To people who claim to crash hourly, I only say "sorry". I've stopped giving advice on that front anymore because people tend to call you bad names if you take SW's side on an issue.

If I thought the software was as bad as some folks claim it is, I'd be using something else.

Tales from the CAD Admin side of thing are interesting. Post more stuff on that. I'd enjoy an benefit from it, and think others would as well.

Matt

[Francesco Rustichelli]

I have just installed the Microsoft XP Hot Fix enabling the automatic file unfrag & compression.

It works fine; if in some weeks this has no side effects, I think it is enough for me to start recommending the upgrade to anybody.

NOTE: the hotfix can be downloaded ONLY from SWX KB site, NOT from MS's.