Interesting news. I have a couple of questions which perhaps someone might kindly be able to help answer?



(a) I gather from some of the 2015 time-frame reviews that stability and feature completeness (missing essential and non working features) were early problems. How stable and well featured is CS presently?



(b) I'm used to using full Altium Designer at work, so I'm wondering what most significantly I'd be missing if I ever should look into CS for personal use (I'm familiar with alternatives like EAGLE et. al.)? I understand that STEP export and some features like that have been promised. I don't care about the TASKING embedded IDE / FPGA stuff in AD. PSPICE circuit simulation / SI & IBIS analysis are not critical but "would be nice". Gerber viewer "ought" to be present but I guess this was missing in CS early on and maybe still is? FLEX design capability as in AC is not essential but "would be nice". AD menus vs. CS ribbon I can live with if there are good shortcut options now. So what would I be most missing vs. AD in the present and known near future CS?



(c) Is CS an offline program or does it need the cloud for essential functions? Free online component library/altium content vault? Online altium live licensing or can you work offline for extended times after activating and checking out your license or something?



(d) What happens if you do not pay the yearly maintenance fee? Can you use whatever version of the program you last acquired while on maintenance forevermore without support / upgrades from ongoing maintenance? Do you lose access to the use of the program version you had already obtained access to if your maintenance expires? What could you do to get back on maintenance after some months or years of having not renewed the maintenance, is there a particular process / cost implication?



(e) What is the possibility to "lock in" a particular maintenance cost beyond the present paid year? Can you pre-pay for 2, 3, 5 years of maintenance and be guaranteed of the rate/term, or is there simply no telling if next year the maintenance cost could rise to $1000/year or whatever?



(f) What are the system requirements? Is XP or Windows 7 suporrted or is there any indication they're likely to push toward windows 8 / windows 10 only (which I do not prefer) soon?



(g) Are there to be any "levels" of CS features / versions or is it all based around a single initial price and single annual maintenance price for a single feature set / version?



(h) What about the library, is there a large "built" in offline library? Access to "altium content vault" like full AD? Is there now an IPC compatible footprint maker wizard like full AD (I heard CS did not at the start have this?)?



Thanks!

