| Pages in topic: [1 2] > | Always a risk to upgrade SDL products Thread poster: Gfarley
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Gfarley
Norway
Local time: 21:33
Norwegian (Bokmal) to English
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Given the volume of problems associated with major upgrades to SDL products (ref. this and other forums and personal experience) and the poor level of free support available, everyone needs to carefully weigh the value of new features and fixed errors in each upgrade against the risk of lost productivity and added costs. After reviewing the list of new features in Studio 2011 and MultiTerm 2011 I have decided that I simply cannot afford to upgrade. Even though it's supposedly a "free" upgrade for those with a paid support agreement! I was also told by SDL Support that upgrading would result in my license for 2009 being replaced. My Studio 2009 is finally stable, after dozens of support cases over the last two years and I have to let the sleeping dog lie...
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Good point. I am also very reluctant to upgrade this time around. Studio does what it should most of the time and if it doesn't I know how to fix it. The supposed advantages of 2011 have either not been pointed out clearly enough to the translator, or they simply are non-existent. Same thing applies to MemoQ in a way. There may be advantages to the newest version, but they are not apparent to the translator, so why would I even risk it, let alone spend any hard-earned money on it? It doesn't seem to made with me, the translator, in mind.
As long as these companies keep marketing their programs to translation agencies they will always have to overcome that resistance amongst the actual users.
| | | | Aude Sylvain 
France
Local time: 21:33
English to French
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Hello,
While I obviously believe you, and sympathise, when you report that you experienced problems with Studio/Multiterm 2009, I must admit that I find your post a bit surprising since, if I understand correctly, you are elaborating on assumptions.
For what it's worth, I've been using Studio and Multiterm 2011 since months on 2 OS (Windows and Mac through Parallels) and I did not experience any serious issue to date. I find it more stable than 2009 in fact. I fully understand though that if you are happy with your current setup and don’t need the new features, it might not be that interesting for you to upgrade.
I honestly don’t think the number of posts in these forums should be used as a basis to assess the reliability/performance of the application. Studio is widely spread (so that mathematically, there are more people asking for help than for a software with a limited distribution), and it is a sophisticated programme that involves a learning curve.
My 2 cents…
| | | | Clarisa Moraña
Argentina
Local time: 16:33
Member (2002)
English to Spanish
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You were smart enough to read that the upgrade to 2011 will result in the replacement of your 2009 license!
In my case, I'm always hurry to buy the upgraded product and I usually let the new license there, quiet in my sdl trados site, until I know all the bugs of the new versions are fixed. One year and a half is the time I need to finally upgrade to the latest version. I also profit that time to study the upgraded tool through webinars, reading the user manual, and so on. My own experience, as Trados user since 3.5 (or was it 3, so many years have passed that I have forgotten the version number), supports Gfarley opinion: the first releases of the SDL Trados products have plenty of bugs, sometimes they look like "beta" products. Recently, I've been assured by SDL Trados staff that this Studio 2011 is very reliable and stable. I have lost my license of the 2009 product... which is installed in my PC, I'm terrified if something wrong happens to my PC, I'm not able to return my license. I will loss forever my Studio 2009 (anyway, I'm not sure the reason why I'm complaining, as only one client has requested me to use Studio 2009 for a project that started two weeks ago, a month after I had bought the license of the 2011 version). I should have read that I was going to loss my license. - BTW, I have not checked my SDL site, but I don't know what happened to the license of the Trados Workbench 2007 that came with Studio 2009. I'm afraid to check.
Regards
Clarisa
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ghislandi
Local time: 20:33
English to Italian
Dear Clarisa,
I am from SDL
Your SDL Trados 2007 Suite license remains in the account. So hopefully this should be a positive thing for you.
The only swap is from 2009 to 2011.
Regards
Massi
| | | | JaneD
Sweden
Local time: 21:33
Member (2009)
Swedish to English
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| Always a risk to upgrade any software | Nov 8, 2011 |
Having worked in the industry, I know that no matter how much testing a product has gone through there are always circumstances that mean that it will fall over when used in real life.
Then there's the "we've changed all this just because we feel like it" problem, which users of Trados 2007 are still complaining about when they first come across Studio 2009. (Or compare Microsoft Office pre and post 2007).
I'm astonished at the number of translators who seemingly have taken on the upgrade to Studio 2011 immediately it has been released. I love Studio; I couldn't imagine working without it, and I *tried* the 2011 version (because I really, really want to be able to produce bilingual files). But when I saw the obvious faults (F3 not working properly, for example), I knew that I was right to stick to my guns.
*Never* install the first release of anything unless you really love troubleshooting. Wait for at least service pack 2.
And meanwhile be thankful that some people seem to love being guinea pigs.
| | | | | F3 not working properly? | Nov 8, 2011 |
Hi Jane,
Can you elaborate on the F3 problem?
Thanks
Paul
| | | | Jerzy Czopik
Germany
Local time: 21:33
Member (2003)
Polish to German
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| F3 = concordance | Nov 8, 2011 |
and from what I know you most certainly refer to concordance searches.
The concordance search in Studio allows to look at source and target side. The F3 key starts a concordance search from where you are now. If you are in source, it starts source concordance, but if you are in target it starts target concordance. Now when you copied source to target and started a concordance search with F3 it looked on the target side but for source text. It is obvious Studio will find no hits.
Instead of using F3 you should use dedicated searches: in the default settings CTRL+F3 starts a source search (regardless where your cursor now is) and CTRL+SHIFT+F3 starts a target search.
BTW this is Studio basics usage.
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Ines Burrell
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:33
Member (2004)
English to Latvian
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| This is my problem actually | Nov 8, 2011 |
SDL Support wrote:
Hi Jane,
Can you elaborate on the F3 problem?
Thanks
Paul
I think I can explain this, or at least I can say what problems I have with F3. In my case Concordance search does not go ahead immediately, I usually have to reselect the term in my source text at least twice, in most cases three times before Concordance returns any results. What usually happens is that it returns the results for the previous search or, if this is the first search, gives you a blank search window. I find that if I bang on F3 really hard, it works better. Due to technical problems with my hardware I have had to install 2011 on four different computers so far and this problem has been present in all of them so I cannot see how this can the fault of the computer. It is truly annoying but since I have had other problems with 2011, I have not yet had time to file a support ticket for this, especially since I have got my 2009 licence back due to some language specific problems in 2011 than were not present in 2009.
Ines
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Burrell wrote:
In my case Concordance search does not go ahead immediately, I usually have to reselect the term in my source text at least twice...
What usually happens is that it returns the results for the previous search or, if this is the first search, gives you a blank search window.
Confirmed, I'm experiencing this as well.
[Upraveno: 2011-11-08 11:59 GMT]
| | | | cwfutter
Germany
English to German
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| 2011 better than 2009? | Nov 8, 2011 |
Well I have beta'd the 2011 and I found this pleasant to work with. At least it solved my problem with Multi Term. I have translated about 40k words with it without problems. It DID cause problems on installation but they were resolved. The problem that I see with sticking to 2009 is the lack of support. And I think its extremely bad style to leave you without support for a really expensive product and make you even pay for support.
Regards, Gernot
| | | | Clarisa Moraña
Argentina
Local time: 16:33
Member (2002)
English to Spanish
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| Glad to know. | Nov 8, 2011 |
ghislandi wrote:
Dear Clarisa,
I am from SDL
Your SDL Trados 2007 Suite license remains in the account. So hopefully this should be a positive thing for you.
The only swap is from 2009 to 2011.
Regards
Massi
Is good to know that. I've noticed that the new Studio 2011 is sold withouth Trados 2007 (I believe there is one version that includes it).
Regards
Clarisa
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Gfarley
Norway
Local time: 21:33
Norwegian (Bokmal) to English
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TOPIC STARTER | Responses to my original post... | Nov 8, 2011 |
Marinus Vesseur wrote:
... It doesn't seem to be made with me, the translator, in mind.
As long as these companies keep marketing their programs to translation agencies they will always have to overcome that resistance amongst the actual users.
I totally agree Marinus. That was also my conclusion after reading the list of changes - mostly for agencies and PMs. The fact that SDL has chosen to fix Google Translate in 2011 and let it die in 2009 is to me just a blatent attempt to force more translators to upgrade to 2011 (see other thread in this forum for MUCH more on this...)
JaneD wrote:
...*Never* install the first release of anything unless you really love troubleshooting. Wait for at least service pack 2.
Good advice Jane, thanks. (Although it was SP2 that really clobbered my Studio 2009 )
Clarisa Moraña wrote:
...I have lost my license of the 2009 product... which is installed in my PC, I'm terrified if something wrong happens to my PC, I'm not able to return my license... I should have read that I was going to lose my license.
No Clarisa, it's not your fault. SDL shouldn't be removing licenses from users who upgrade. Who else does that?! When we go and buy a second car they don't take our first one away (unless as a trade-in, then they pay us.) I paid for 2009 AND 2011 (through my PSMA) so I own both!
and last but not least...
Aude Sylvain wrote:
I honestly don’t think the number of posts in these forums should be used as a basis to assess the reliability/performance of the application. Studio is widely spread (so that mathematically, there are more people asking for help than for a software with a limited distribution)
Here I must disagree. This forum is an excellent place to get a good snapshot of the reliability/performance of SDL's products. I would say in fact that what we see here is just the tip of the iceberg - there are many who struggle without posting, many more that contact SDL directly (those with paid support) and there are several other forums with other posters trying to solve problems.
And to give SDL credit where credit is due - it's great that they troll these forums and try to help and their paid support is excellent!
| | | | | Quick comment | Nov 8, 2011 |
Gfarley wrote:
No Clarisa, it's not your fault. SDL shouldn't be removing licenses from users who upgrade. Who else does that?! When we go and buy a second car they don't take our first one away (unless as a trade-in, then they pay us.) I paid for 2009 AND 2011 (through my PSMA) so I own both!
The upgrade is a sort of trade-in. You don't pay the full price for the later version, just a discounted upgrade price. Makes sense to me.
[Upraveno: 2011-11-08 21:19 GMT]
| | | | Clarisa Moraña
Argentina
Local time: 16:33
Member (2002)
English to Spanish
+ ...
| You are right, but... | Nov 9, 2011 |
Stanislav Pokorny wrote: Gfarley wrote:
No Clarisa, it's not your fault. SDL shouldn't be removing licenses from users who upgrade. Who else does that?! When we go and buy a second car they don't take our first one away (unless as a trade-in, then they pay us.) I paid for 2009 AND 2011 (through my PSMA) so I own both! The upgrade is a sort of trade-in. You don't pay the full price for the later version, just a discounted upgrade price. Makes sense to me. [Upraveno: 2011-11-08 21:19 GMT]
As I said before, I only wanted to buy the upgrade and not use it for a while. EXACTLY AS I HAVE BEEN DOING SINCE THE VERY FIRST TRADOS VERSION I BOUGHT. Now the Company has changed the rules, idiot me I failed to read carefully whatever agreement or deal I accepted. I do feel STUPID. Stanislav you are right in every single word you wrote. I think the Company is taking profit of my blatant stupidity. (I'm so idiot that I've even been offered to have the money back and to return Studio 2011, and I have not replied yet. I only wanted to buy the product and not use it for a while, without activating the license, using my two years old Studio 2009 until I felt comfortable). What I've lost forever is the autosuggest 2009 (fortunatedly they were nice at the Company and the lend me a key code that allowed me to use Autosuggest 2009 for a week to solve my immediate problems).
I don't mind that Studio does not allow me to use the translation memories I created for my oil &gas client in Venezuela, for the oil & gas client who wants a translation memory for the Latam market, and I cannot use those for my Columbian client, not for the Argentine one. Many different clients in the same subject matter, translation memories in the same subject matter (oil & gas) with different locale are not allowed. But this is not the Company's fault, the issue is due to Microsoft (they can provide me a big document explaining me the reasons of the locale issues). Only for your information, Spanish, even though it has regional variants is the same language all around Latin America and Spain, and we all use the Diccionario de la Real Academia (printed in Spain). Oil & gas engineers from all over Latin America move from one country to another in the oil & gas fields, and I cannot use the same translation memories for them. Again, this is not fault of the company, it's Microsoft fault's.
I don't even mind that I still don't know the difference between the main translation memory and the project translation memory, or the difference between populate and update translation memory, or if I have to create a project based on a project template or based on a previous project, I don't know even the purpose of the 39 file types created in the project folder (can I delete them?). There are some many things I ignore in Studio 2009 and now there is the the new version in the marketplace. Yes, there are some online training courses. I've paid two of them. The sound was awful in one (it was a rainy day in Argentina and Internet providers do not work well when it rains). The other one, two hours, did not help me a lot with the multiple and terrific features offered by the software. Shame on me!
My problem is that I still believe in miracles, and that things can change for good some day.
Regards
Clarisa
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