My new workstation hasn’t arrived yet but I purchased Rhino 5 through Novedge. I was expecting a case with a DVD but instead I got a heavy envelope with a single commercial user license key that says “No DVD Inside. Download from www.rhino3d.com/download/5” The Novedge Rhino page displays a case with DVD and there was nothing about it being a download delivery.
Is this the current delivery method now?
I think so, yes. And, if you download, you will always have the latest service release.
Okay. Thank you, menno.
Ya, those cd’s provide a sense of security worth a dollar though. Books will always kick kindle’s. Printed is usually more user friendly than computer, and of course carpal tunnel. There’s something about pages and cds…
I would rather copy the download onto a USB drive, along with all my customizations, and keep that in a safe place.
When V5 was released, we ordered close to 50 upgrades. We received almost 50 identical DVDs that came in a box that we had to pay shipping for. It sure would have been easier to have one download and an e-mail with 50 keycodes.
By the way, those DVDs ended up in the local landfill. The only thing of value was the keycode which I recorded in a spreadsheet and keep on the USB drive mentioned above.
As for printed manuals, everyone here agrees that the help file with the short little videos is way more useful.
Dan
Yes. We are also approaching the release of electronic licensing with no physical package at all… “Soon…”
–Mitch
you know, now that you mention it!!! My neighbors son had gotten it, or stole it thinking it was a video game or dvd of value that he could sell, or it was genuinely misdelivered since our address numbers are very very similar.
Took an extra week to figure it out, and luckily my neighbor gave it back when I came asking around.
But I still like hardcopies. To the organized business owner with 7 dollars for a usb drive and proper storage conditions, it may make sense.
The the unorganized guy who can hardly keep track of his carkeys, let alone a usb drive the size of a stick of gum, maybe not.
What I’m getting at, is that to some people, keeping track of where you put things is baffling.
For those with all the space one can desire, an infinite office supply organization budget, and a map and database of exactly where everything you own is, and a backup copy of that in a known safe place…(I’m just kidding, one day, everyday will be like ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh)
Cd’s can be scratched, but unlikely in cases. Usb drives can get jammed with lint and god knows what else, and electronic components are more prone to damage. But I’m sure Mcneel might be able to help ya out since they can now afford an employee devoted these situations who can also make good coffee right?
Hey Dan, you keep the box with the 50 cases on your nightstand and fondle it for good ju-ju each night before bed right? Right after you brush and floss and not a moment after? And you don’t break promises? Clearly I am overwhelmed with stuff I am learning being difficult at times to learn and am slacking for the time being. At times, asking to take mcdonalds orders doesn’t seem too far out of reach, other times I am not feeling the confidence it takes to not get rejected.
Like the printed page, DVDs don’t get updated either. That’s not a big issue for a book but for something that requires lots of little changes, it’s not a flexible enough medium.
Downloads solve that.
One of the issues have on tech support is dealing with old, buggy, DVD based installers. Downloads solve that too.
Additionally, we have an item in the works for the installer itself, then when run, checks back with us (if there is an Internet connection), and warns the user there is an updated version. Smarter installers will help.
We used to routinely disgust ourselves by tossing boxes and boxes of CDs and DVDs in the dumpster when a new service release came out.
That was REALLY painful.
I don’t think you’ll see us going back to physical media.
Not using it solves too many problems to go back to our wasteful ways.
Ah. So you can put the installer on a thumb drive then? That makes sense.
Believe it or not, there are still places where cell and wifi don’t work. Sometimes you might be in a mountainous area with poor to no reception plus no network access and be modifying design on site. I’m not in that predicament right now but have found myself in it with acad.
Thanks again all.
heh… i have 3 computers right now… the one from 2006 can accept a dvd… the one from 2010 has an ssd in place of it’s dvd drive… the one from 2014 doesn’t even have a slot 
(no point really-- just gossiping)
No, the box with 50 DVD’s is in the landfill NOT decomposing.
You know, back in the stone age I did multimedia CD-ROM authoring. Macromedia Director or Authorware, some dinosaurs around here might know those.
Endless nights testing and fixing testing and fixing and so on. Delivery date would be met but in the end a bug or two would always slip past.
Then came the internet. We, the same team started doing it instead. We thought how great, If we miss something we can fix it, aint that great?
Well, not so.
The commitment to getting it right is never the same when it’s not to be set in stone, and then we had never finished web sites. Because we weren’t so through and because the client was never happy.
I wonder, in case of magnetic polar shift or electromagnetic weapons wiping out all digital. Everything we’ve created and recorded digitally would be wiped out in an instant, including our back up stuff. Years of work would ceased to exist.
Assuming we would survive there would be no record of anything, empty computer shells that’s all.
Yeah, I’ve actually got all my backups carved bitwise into stone tablets. --Mitch
banks will get wiped out too? i’m backing it… any idea where can i find a polar shifter?
pretty sure this could be argued ad nauseam and it pretty much just comes down to individuals choosing a side and stating opinions… from my (user) point of view, downloading is way (way!) better.
I bet you left out the stuff that is somehow just not worth the effort. How many tablets did you end up with? I’m guessing… nearly one.
-PG
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think internet delivery is worse - it just has some side effects.
No, actually, I’ve got tons of these (literally) neatly stacked up and stored in the cellar* - right next to my supply of gold bars. The most difficult part is when I have to send a file to someone - what with hiring the forklift and the flatbed truck and all… --Mitch
* (which also serves as my bomb shelter)
well I’m glad et least one person is wise enough to carve his data into stone. They will last eons. Contrary to those cloud storage things. One beautiful morning you wake up, run outside, look up and there are is not a cloud in the sky…