Re: POLL: Would you use Ada more if...

[Kilgallen@SpamCop.net (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <5ee5b646.0208170753.4c044cef@posting.google.com>, dewar@gnat.com (Robert Dewar) writes:

> Well I am not sure when your support contract started, but
> we definitely mail off handsome blue boxes with a CD ROM
> and printed manuals. Generally people get started by
> downloading from the Ada Core Technologies site, so it
> is possible you have not got your box yet, but you 
> definitely should receive it, so if you don't contact
> sales@gnat.com or sales@act-europe.fr and ask where your
> box is :-)
> 
> Seriously, we do find that people like to have printed
> manuals, especially to get started. Of course the printed
> manuals do get out of date, as does the CD ROM in the box,
> but they are a good starting point and the blue box looks
> very nice on the shelf!

The part I see missing, is the ability for supported customers
to get successive versions sent on CDROM.  Certainly the cost of
pressing more CDROMs is not an issue, since that gets cheaper
with quantity.  Even if ACT were using CD-R that is no worse
than proportional to quantity.

In the VMS world, the OS vendor (fill in today's name) even makes
patches available on CDROM, with download as an option for those
who want them sooner/cheaper.