??? 10/26/11 18:43 Read: times |
#184378 - One question Responding to: ???'s previous message |
Per Westermark said:
I know many ways how I can abuse different tools I can find on the net.
The question is - should I discuss them? People who have enough skills will always be able to think of interesting concepts themselves - but should these ideas be debated officially, when the end result of them is to get past a licensing issue. There are some licenses that are broken, and where different countries have laws allowing the use of work-arounds. Limitations that makes it impossible for a paying user to use a product in the way it was intended. But that really isn't applicable to free evaluation versions. We haven't payed anything for them, so we have no rights to have expectations. And we have no right to try to get past the enforced limitations just because _we_ want more. What about the guy who simply wants to evaluate the product? He probably does want to see the GUI, and some of the "features." Mainly, though, I'd guess, he wants to see how efficient a code body is produced by the compiler, i.e. how much slower and/or larger the output is. How efficiently it produces the same construct as a competing product. There are products that have to be developed with the most cost-effective use of MCU resources is made. Those are the ones most likely to be attractive to a buyer, since high-volume production will quickly swallow up the cost of a software tool set and they're also the ones where $0.25 in hardware cost makes a difference. If he can save the cost of external hardware by "bit-banging" (not literally) something because the code is fast enough, that is attractive. If he can make it fit in the MCU version with 16 kB of flash rather than 64 kB, there's another saving. If only there were a way, repeatedly, to make such evaluations produce useful information. Erik has said he'd "borrow" a full version when he had a likely sale, but it's clear that these vendors don't really want someone to make a rigorous comparison and buy on the basis of what best suits a particular application. They simply want us to believe that their product is the best thing since sliced bread, and take them at their word. RE |