Free Unlimited Version of AutoTRAX PCB Design Software

[CatalinaWOW]

I have followed Autotrax/DEX for over 10 years now.  He drops the price periodically.  So it may have dropped when Deathwish looked. 

Also, it has almost always been some hybrid of a 1 year subscription and a purchase.  A purchase in the sense that the version you have will work indefinitely (on similar enough hardware and software).  A subscription in the sense that free updates end roughly one year later (depends on his diligence in cutting you off.)  He almost always offers a very attractive price to sign up for another year.

Some may regard this as another rip off or dishonest or whatever.  It has always seemed to me that a vendor should be able to choose the terms of their sale.  And that the buyer has at least some responsibility for understanding what they are buying.  That thinking may or may not be in line with the laws of any particular country, or any philosophical group.

[ez24]

No-one actually confirmed the price to $49 before going back to $99 if it did at all.

I saw it at $49 on the main web site then a couple of days later $99

[John Coloccia]

I have seen this thread stray a lot. I think Deathwish should have provided a link to the offending article  saying $49 so that it could be confirmed. No-one actually confirmed the price to $49 before going back to $99 if it did at all.

I got an e-mail with the $49 offer in it.  I guess e-mails started coming because I downloaded a trial several weeks ago before he had his melt-down.

[PlainName]

I've always found autotrackers to be kinda wanky.

I was doing work for a client, debugging new hardware (very densely packed dual-side SMT). We would fix a few problems, usually related to the wiremap, and a few days later there would be another brand new version of the board to debug.

The layout of the boards was rubbish. So much so that another dev and I used to take the piss out of them mercilessly. There would be loops in tracks, tracks going past a pin only to come back a mm or two the other side, etc. As you say: kinda wanky. I mentioned this to the client (it was hard not to when you're debugging SATA on rubbish like this) and his view was that he could set the autorouter running when he went for lunch and then send the gerbers off when he got back, whereas it would take a couple of weeks to lay out these boards manually. He does have a point there and, the bit that really counts, the damned things worked fine once the schematic was fixed. Can't really argue with that...