CompuServe Messages

I agree with a lot of what you say, which is why I'm really interested in what value is added by Hyperchem (particularly since the industrial price really pits the software against some software of good functionality (albeit they tend to run on platforms other than PC (RISC, primarily)). PC modelling software seems to fall within two broad categories: 1. Written by Chemist (physicist or whatever). Usually gives good scientific results but few of these packages (PC MODEL is a good example) are written by software experts so performance is relatively poor (particularly memory usage and graphics manipulation). 2. Written by software mavens who don't seem to do a good job of the science but produce packages that do a better job living up to the current standards of PC software. By the way, ALCHEMY III software is an interesting middle ground. Good use of PC and nice programming (particulary graphics rotation, etc., especially the DOS version) but the program hasn't got enough real modeling capability to be of much serious use (e.g., no ability to do even the most rudimentary conformational searching, no torsion driver for example). Hyperchem holds promise overall, I think. I'm hoping it will mature relatively rapidly and expect that support bugs will get worked out soon, but I still need to get its position (capabilities and price) relative to other packages straight in my mind. Price is always a relative thing, its difficult to demonstrate the value derived from any software and modeling always seems to bring along a lot of baggage of its own. Let me know what you think.