SolidWorks Office no more?

I just got an email from our vendor to let us know that SolidWorks Office
(what we purchased just a few months ago) is now "discontinued" and that we
have until February 1st. to upgrade to SW Office Pro. As if that wasn't
enough, our maintenance goes up by $200/yr. WTF?!

My opinion is that they need to upgrade us for free and eat the maintenance
differential for a year. What gets me is that, apparently, they seem to be
offering a free upgrade, if, and only if, we do so by February 1st and agree
to the higher maintenance fees.

Is this a joke? Anyone else run into this?

-Martin

 

They are not discountinuing Office they are adding another level. That
level is Office Premium. The deal that I know is if you want you can
choose to go to Office Pro for free but you would have to pay the
Office Pro subscription. As far as I know you are not forced to go to
Office Pro.

This is the last paragraph of the announcement from our Vendor:

If you are looking to buy SolidWorks Office, now is the time! This
product will no longer be available for purchase after January 31, 2005
but SolidWorks Corporation WILL continue to enhance and support the
SolidWorks Office product. Please click here for a product line
comparison and additional information.

Ken M.

 

The new product line will be SolidWorks ($3995 US), Office Professional
($5495 US), and Office Premium($7995 US). Premium will include Office
Professional plus Routing plus CosmosWorks Designer.

If you have Office you will be allowed until April 15th to upgrade to Office
Professional (which will get you PDMWorks) for no charge. At the time of
the free upgrade it will not cost anything. The next time your subscription
service renewal comes up you will then need to pay the subscription service
($1495 US) for Office Professional.

If you have Office seats already you will also until April 15th be able to
purchase new seats of Office Professional for the price of Office ($4995
US). Subscription must be purchased and would be $1495 US.

u ahve > Office Pro subscription. As far as I know you are not forced to go
to

 

So, what if you have Office and you don't upgrade to Professional?
When the next release comes out what do you get? and how much is your
subscription service?

Aaron

 

Good question. That was not addressed in the email that I got. Perhaps
someone else can answer that one.

 

This is interesting. There seem to be different messages going around. I
was told that the no-cost deadline for the upgrade is February 1st and that,
at that time, the difference in support cost would be due.

Nobody wants to get stuck with a product package that is dicontinued. The
notice I got says very clearly that it is being dicontinued (the package).
If the deal is as someone hinted (upgrade now, pay diff. upon renewal), then
I guess its OK. However, if they want money right away, I think it is
wrong. In fact, I think that they should LOWER the maintenance cost for
Office Pro to the level of Office. That would be the right thing to do. If
you bought Office it is probably 'cause you didn't care for PDM and whatever
else is in Pro.

-Martin

 

You are correct in that different messages (some wrong or confusing) are
going around. Two things that I am very sure of is that the deadline for
the free product upgrade is April 15th not Feb 1. Feb 1st is the date that
resellers will no longer be able to sell SolidWorks Office. Your increase in
subscription service will not be due until the next time your normal
subscription service is due. Might be a month, 6 months, or 11 months. They
are not going to charge you an immediate incremental (i.e.,1 month , 3
months, 6 months, etc.) cost for the difference in subscription service
cost.

The thing I don't know about is for the ones that already have Office and do
not want PDMWorks. Let's pretend you use some of the elements in Office
(i.e., Toolbox and Edrawings Pro) and you either just don't want PDMWorks or
maybe you have anther data management solution. Since the product
SolidWorks office will no longer exist will you now be stuck with a higher
maintenance cost. ???

 

Aaron,

You will still get the add-ins that were in the office bundle and your
subscription service will be the same. The add-ins will have
enhancements.

Wayne

 

I just had a look at the SW website:

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/products/3dmech.html

So apparently the Office bundle is no more.

None of the area reseller's websites reflect the change and when I
called my VAR he said he would call back because it was complicated.

Aside from that, Office Professional and Premium do not come anywhere
close to the sweet spot we need when we add seats. PDMWorks will not
work within our system and we already have an FEA solution that works
within SW and we have nothing to do with routing. We use eDrawings a
lot, then Toolbox, then, way in the back are PhotoWorks, FeatureWorks,
Utilities. Animator only gets used when someone is curious. SW would
have been a lot smarter to say, " Buy bundle A for x dollars and pick
any 3 addins, buy bundle B and pick 4, etc. Then the market would
drive what gets sold and addins like Routing would probably have a much
larger audience.

 

As I understand it is you can upgrade for Free. Though you will have Higher
maintenance costs but as of when I don't know. And if you stay at SW Office
you will have the same maintenance fee indefinitely through new releases and
it will be fully supported but will no longer be sold by the retailers.

Corey