Wow! VectorWorks Packaging

These days, software packages are either inexistant (those downloaded from the Web) or a let-down (who designed in all that plain brown cardboard filler?) You pay $4000 or $6000 for software and get -- a disc with a couple of leaflets. Last you got less. This year, lesser. You want a printed manual? That's a penny-pinching $$$ extra.

Anyhow, opening software boxes was exciting in the 1980s. How many diskettes will this software upgrade boast? Over how many feet of bookcase will the fatter-than-ever documentation rule? But then it became dull as dust in the 2000s. Last week, VectorWorks Nemetschek North America shipped me their VectorWorks software. And I got around to opening it today...

Opening the Vectorworks 2008 package is a mini Wow! experience. Reminded me of opening that iPod Nano package in a New Orleans restaurant at a SolidWorks we-love-the-press event a couple years back.

The outer box is white with gray type -- the German influence.

Inside, a small black box that comes apart like a fancy multi-CD retrospective package of the fading rock star in need of a royalty boost.

Inside, a pair of DVDs with a unique slider mechanism that gently ejects the discs from their clear plastic cases -- the e-slimecase is of German design (www.ejector.de). One DVD has all the software, the other a learning series of core concepts.

Underneath, two fat printed manuals -- user guides on the fundamentals and on design series -- nearly three inches thick!

Finally, a color brochure with six pages of assistance methods and courses. (I'd've like to have seen a clear indication which are free, and which not.)

Someone at Nemetschek thought about how to make the software unpacking experience as thrilling as Christmas morning (er, Christmas Eve in Germany).

Thing is, I never use printed documentation -- rarely even use online documentation. The dullness of downloaded software suits me just fine, as does a DVD delivered in a thin-as-possible plastic box. For I want to get my work done. Software should be so well written that I don't need to access additional assistance.

Still, this VectorWorks package makes me think kind thoughts towards the thoughtfulness of the package designers.

Comments

[matt]

Yeah, opening software packaging is anti-climactic at best. It just makes you hope that the software itself is better than the packaging.

I'm kind of surprised that someone who writes hard copy documentation doesn't make a more compelling case for hard copy documentation.

[raphg]

I'm like the tobacco farmer who doesn't smoke.

I do refer to one book from time to time, my own "Illustrated AutoCAD Quick Reference."

[Bill Fane]

I remeber an AutoCAD release some years back that won a tounge-in-cheek award from PC Magazine for being the "heaviest" software package on the market. We were running 12 copies; it took a pickup truck and a forklift to deliver the upgrades.

Autodesk proudly proclaimed winning the award in a number of ads.

Bill Fane