CompuServe Messages

I will find out. We ordered it two weeks ago from Digimation and they were out of stock at the time. Price is not the issue for me. Performance is. I don't mind spending 70 grand for an Indigo or a bearded lady for that matter as long as the product works to the best of its ability. I won't work with hardware or software that is only so-so anymore. I don't have the time. I have a series of video tapes planned at the rate of one a month for the forseable future and waiting on rendering is causing a difficulty. And I do optimize the meshes and network render. To me this is still a cottage industry. Most of the folks I have talked to don't rake in 5 to 50 million a year doing 3DS so forking out a grand for a routine is a lot. I don't mind spending 3 grand for Powerbuilder Enterprise or S-Designor because I can make that back in a week or two. I have yet to make any outside money doing animation. What worries me is the price trend I see happening. The software prices are going up not down. While I can afford the $1000 for World Builder, what other IPASs or other routines are down the pike at $1000 or $2000? At some point the price structure becomes equivalent to the SGI/Alias/Vega high end. I've got around $10,000 in software for animation now. Bear in mind that I have 20 years of computer experience dating back to punch cards on a Univac but have only been doing 3DS and video for a year. Some of the things I see tolerated in this arena would get me fired doing data processing in a production shop. For example, I love RazorPro and will stay with it. However, we bought Adobe Premiere 4 for Windows and that turned out to be a disaster. The software is buggy and proved unusable on our standard run-of-the-mill Pentiums because of the ATI cards we run. If I released a Powerbuilder application like that I would be told to hit the door and don't let it hit you in the fanny on the way out. Enough bashing because I actually have had a truly great time doing animation and CD-ROM poduction. Plus everybody has been a great help unlike some in computing. Send me your thoughts. I'm still learning as I go.