Subject: CCL:New website alert

From: Alan.Shusterman.-at-.directory.reed.edu (Alan Shusterman)
Date: 06 Mar 2004 10:11:06 PST

>Joe Leonard wrote:
>Since codes can't compete on results, they have to
>compete on features, price or performance.  There are a
>number of codes which are available for little or no money,
>so price presents a problem. Features tend to be well
>published, and eventually end up in many programs.  This
>leaves performance, perhaps the single most important
>information for hardware and software vendors - benchmark
>performance.

Joe has identified 3 important factors people *might* consider, but my experience suggests that only the first two factors are routinely considered and *performance* is usually ignored. I have given many workshops on computational chemistry over the last few years and spoken with many dozens of college chemistry teachers and researchers. Invariably, the workshop attendees always want to discuss possible software purchases with me ("what do you use?" is a common question). It turns out that they care a great deal about price (very important if you have to buy a program 20x to cover a lab) and features (but only important in a threshold sense). They never ask about performance.

So it seems that Joe's big three decline in importance: threshold features > price >> performance. This might represent a lack of sophistication on their part, or just the opposite: we have learned over the past decade that performance (especially on a personal computer) is poorly defined.

If someone is considering a purchase, I'd encourage them to also think about ease-of-use, customer support, documentation, reliability, and so on. Caveat emptor!

-Alan

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Alan Shusterman
Department of Chemistry
Reed College
3203 S.E. Woodstock Blvd.
Portland, OR 97202-8199
503-517-7699