I have a love/hate relationship similar to the love/hate relationship I have with Microsoft. I do love AutoDesk more than I hate them, though, but I'm not sure I can say the same for Microsoft.

The quality of AutoDesk's latest product is always top knotch. When there are bugs they fix 'em fast and tell you about it. (luckily they don't follow the Microsoft model here.) Microsoft and Autodesk both suck at supporting very many versions behind the flagship. Autodesk supports 3 releases. Then they had the gall to say 2000 and 2000i are seperate releases. The i version should have been a service pack imo. Technically we are only 3 releases behind, so we should be able to expect some decent support. That is only valid when using Windows 2000, NT 4.0, 9x. Windows XP is not supported for ACAD 2000i because AutoDesk says so, even though it conflicts with their 3 release statement. To get XP support you have to upgrade.

Microsoft also has a bad habit of dropping old customers. On one of my home computers I run AutoCAD on win NT 4 because its more stable than on win98. I recently had to rebuild that OS from scratch. Damned if I couldn't find my old Windows Explorer 4 CD. That CD is a crucial step in installing win NT because without it you can't get the Quick launch bar and Active Desktop. You can install IE5.0, but IE5 doesn't include it*. Once you cross that threshold there is no going back without formatting and starting over. I called all my geek friends and nobody had the disk and thought I was strange for asking. I went online and Microsoft doesn't have it available for download. I googled and found 2 places you could download the disk. Neither builds worked. Finally i consigned myself to clean out the garage in search of it. My wife would probably disagree with the term "cleaned out", since once I found it, I left everything where it was and raced upstairs to install it.

This all happened over my so called long 4th of July weekend, when I was trying to get a personal project ready for permit.

-Steve G.

* There is a way to build a IE5 install CD with active desktop etc. I did it once when I was in a bind at work. You have to become a licensed distributer (its free) for IE, then you can roll your own. It takes a good internet connection and a lot of time. I had neither that weekend hence the scramble to find the original CD.