Re: EMC - a practical implementation?

["Ian Wright" <Ian-at-iw63.freeserve.co.uk>]

Steve,

Apart from finding the tone of your first message on this subject quite
offensive I don't believe that you should comment in this manner about
something you haven't even tried.

----- Original Message -----
From: Stephen B. Patterson <stevieb-at-chisp.net>
> Dan,
>
> Add up the emotional cost of learning and using a new operating
> environment.  How many hours did you spend at it?
> Add up the hours you spent in getting EMC to work.
> Add up the hours you will spend in the future on bug fixing and new
release
> installs and compiles.
>

For anyone who has been around computers for a while as you claim to have
been, Linux is really quite a simple OS to learn, particularly so if you use
one of the many optional desktops such a s KDE which pretty well replicate
the windoze environment. As to EMC itself, setting this up in a basic form
is no more difficult than any windoze application and, hands on, has a
shorter learning curve than many of the similar commercial DOS applications.
I am no computer guru but, after an initial hiccough over a hardware
incompatibility which I should have spotted if I had taken the trouble to
read the documentation, I had a working EMC installation up and running on a
fresh built computer in less than a couple of hours. I've spent much longer
trying to get printers, zip drives etc. to work with windoze!!
Since then I've done several kernel rebuilds and updated installations with
little trouble.

> Is EMC a hobby for you?  If so, congrats on your new-found hobby.
>
> But if you are using it commercially, what is the value of your time?
>

I suppose in my case it could be said to be half way between hobby and
commercial - hopfully the commercial aspect will increase as I get more
proficient at using a cnc machine. What I can say though is that, if it
weren't for EMC, I wouldn't have got anywhere near cnc as there is no way
that, at the outset, I could have justified investing in a commercial system
with its wickedly overpriced software and crippling ongoing 'service
charges'. Also, from personal contact with other people using commercial
packages and from monitoring some of the newsgroups, it seems it would be
difficult to find a commercial package which does not bring a whole heap of
headaches with it - each of which requires chargeable support from the
vendors - charges which must come from your business' profits!

> My point is that my time is valuable and I refuse to do testing and
> debugging of ANY software for free.

Fine, but if you're not prepared to contribute, don't criticise - any fool
can do that. As far as I and many others are concerned, the EMC team are
doing a fine job and have introduced, in a practical manner, the world of
cnc machining to a whole host of people and businesses who would otherwise
never have had such an opportunity. Your obvious obsession with time and
money seems to suggest that perhaps your current business is struggling a
little, perhaps when things improve you may feel able to contribute a little
constructively to your colleagues in the machining world.

Ian

--
Ian W. Wright
Sheffield  UK