Anyone heard when it will be shipped? Waiting waiting.... Love esther

I too am waiting, waiting... drooling, drooling... Though I can't recall exactly where I read it, I thought I had read that C5 would be shipping in "early January".

I'm also waiting... just want to put it on my shelf next to the other 4 and my old RayDream box ; ).

No further word yet from Eovia -- 'early January.'

I feel that I'm falling behind with my work. I wish that start shipping soon Dale

I am new to Carrara, but I bought the download version a few days ago and I can tell you that you will be very happy with it. It is clearly the best program that I found so far. I also bought the Transpose since I have a lot of Poser models to port. But I love it. :-)

I ordered the box version on 31 Dec. I did email Eovia support on 2 Jan asking if I could by chance get a download link for a 'full' copy of C5P. Only afterwards did I stop to think that if they did give me a link, then I would end up with 2 copies, both with keys. I don't expect to get a link. :)

Also waiting ... rj

I ordered the boxed version of the C5 upgrade a few days after Christmas. The email I got from element5 said that I should receive the box "in a few weeks".

I just joined you all. I ordered the Pro version. Wooooot! Happy dance. :D This is a great way to start the new year.

FYI The 20% off sale is thru the 5th. To my surprise my pdf invoice for todays purchase(the 4th) is dated as the 5th so anyone sitting on the fence don't wait another day.

when did they say it wi.l arrive?

I got a e-mail indicating it's currently out of stock but being processed and that it will be shipped as soon as it is back in stock.
It indicated I'll be notified via e-mail when the shipment has been sent out.

No worries. :D

thanks - I guess they'll notify me when it ships too then. Love esther PS well if there's so many people getting it maybe this forum will really liven up

I have mine ordered too. What about the proper manual though?

I'm sure it wil come with a maunual. If not we might as well have got the download. Love esther

The recent newsletter said sale is til 1/8 so either it is a typo or they are extending it.

Oh, It DOES NOT come w/ a hard manual. This has been brought up several times. The entire SW industry has been going to this for several yrs. They will make a manual available for around $20-25, I believe.

My newsletter originally said the 6 of jan, so Eovia must have extended the offer. Yes, Eovia and others continue to screw their customer base by not including a high quality printed manual. They tell you to print the included .pdf file or buy an after market publication. This would be tolerable if they would lower the price of their software, but the companies do not do that. Now all the banner wavers for eovia and other companies will now jump up and say what a great bargain Carrara is or such and such software is,but that is beside the point. These companies have stopped including the manual for the sake of profit. They then leave the customer to spend extra monies to secure printed instructions.

I said the exact same thing in the Carrara newsgroup at Yahoo. I don't see why I should have to pay an extra 20-30 for something just because it comes as a CD in a box without a printed manual included. To me, that's the whole point of buying a physical copy. Other than that, there's not even any mention of when the manual will be ready, which is what I actually meant in my original question. Are we going to have to wait another month to buy that?

All I have heard is that the commercial book for Carrara 5 will follow shortly after the release of C5.

The problem with this is that the book is likely to have been produced hurridly and will most probably be rift with errors. My experience with commercial pubs is that if they come out less than 8 or 10 months after the software release, then they are apt to be inaccurate.

There was a time that software houses kept a writing team on board, as employees or as freelance contractors that followed the production of the software. This meant that when the software was published it came with a printed manual that was highly accurate.

This is seldom the case anymore. Companies no longer want the employee expense and the freelance people are too hurried to meet release dates to be able to put out a good manual. I will venture a guess that the .pdf that comes with C5 is inacurrate.

I have been told by one company, I do not care to mention who, that the average cost of a quality manual ran between 20 and 40 US dollars. This was the setup, printing and shipping costs per manual. This did not include the employeefreelance author expense.

At any rate, the consusmer is buying what I consider to be an incomplete product. After all, would you buy an automobile and then go to the bookstore and buy a users manual for it?

Think about it.

Message edited on: 01/07/2006 14:47

i never look at print manuals - only on screen stuff. love esther

I would like to point out that the manual is not really an extra cost of $20 - $30. If you look at the price of Carrara 5 compared to Carrara 4. You will notice that the price has come down significantly (by $50 actually). A big part of that decrease is the manual. We just thought it was stupid to make everyone pay for a manual even if they did not want it... Charles

I take it Charles that you work for Eovia. It might be "stupid" if everyone who bought C5 was an "experienced" user. However, there will be quite a few "new" users who do not have a clue about C5. The new users get the pleasure of trying to find a C5 aftermarket pub that will cost them from $25 to $49 dollars as a rule. If it cost $10 dollars for Eovia to produce an accurate manual to include with C5, I would have gladly paid that extra $10 dollars instead of what it will cost me to buy a commercial pub from a bookstore. So instead of coming down $50 dollars on the price, Eovia could have come down $40 dollars. Actually, Eovia could have kept the original price, included a manual and they still would have sold just as many copyies and made more money. I have two monitors on my system, yes I can put a .pdf up on one monitor, but when I make notes on the crt with my pen, it makes it difficult for me to read the .pdf manual. At least with a paper copy I can write in the manual any notes that I care to. Not trying to be ugly about this Charles, but Eovia will be hard pressed to prove to me and many others that they made the right decision by not including a manual. Simply because other software companies are dropping the manual does not mean that Eovia needs to follow suite. I suppose that when C6 comes Eovia will begin using that well known fast talking telemarketing technique that DAZ uses.

It is the first time i see a user complain because the product is cheaper... You can still buy the product with the manual for less money and that's not good enough for you ? Honnestly i don't understand...

I think you should sit with a few less 'yes men' then.

I totally agree with BabaLouie. This excuse about C5 being cheaper than the other one is all very well, until you buy the physical copy. Then you find you get charged an extra 20 for postage and it doesn't even include the manual.

I already knew that the manual wasn't included and was going to cost and extra 20, but I assumed that it would be ready for shipping the same day and included with the physical copy for the extra 20. As it is, it looks like I'm going to have to fork out an extra 20 for a box with a CD, then another 20 for the manual. And that'll probably cost another 20 postage! And that's in 's. So it's working out at about $75 more than C4 already!

I don't think I'll be getting C6.

Couldn't you just print out the manual from your computer as it will be available I presume as part of the help menu. Love esther

If I and many others wanted to print the manual, then I'm sure they would have just gone for the downloadable version. You even said that yourself further up this thread. "I'm sure it wil come with a maunual. If not we might as well have got the download. Love esther " I'm not going to kill my printer by printing off 500+ pages from a PDF file. Like BabaLouie, I like to sit and study the manual and mark things when not at the PC.

Yep, true - I would have preferred a download as I've never heard of a boxed version coming without a manual so I did assume it did. But surely the price of the postage of the manual would be the same as the paper and all the printing if you printed it off. I mean it's just something that isn't the end of the world and I'm glad my version was cheaper because of it, as I said I always read my manuals online anyway these days. It's just so much quicker to search them, and I have two monitors so I sometimes have the proggie open on one, and the manual open on the other one. Love esther

As I said, I'm not going to kill my printer by printing off 500+ pages of a manual that should come with the physical copy. If you never read the printed manual, why did you order the physical copy? If I wasn't bothered about manuals, that's what I'd have gone for. Because you've ordered the physical copy, you're basically paying more for the downloaded version with no proper manual, as you still have to pay post and packing.

Yep, I should have ordered the download in retrospect and I would have had it by now. But I just thought it would be nice to have the manual and I didn't know the physical version was going to take so long to arrive. But I do have a laser printer and if I wanted the manual it wouldn't be that difficult for me to print it out. But I don't think I would ever look at it. Love esther

Nod .. you are spot on about 'yes men'. Somewhere in Eovia land someone made the decision about dropping the manual and lowering the price. Someone said "this will attract more buyers" and, everyone said 'yes'.

Eovia has taken the lower path, they have lowered the standard , the bar by which they judge the quality of their product. They have lessend the quality that the end consumer receives and then justified it by lowering the price. All this to attract more sales. What do they cut out next? How low can they go before users say, "well gee, I can get brand z over here for $60 dollars more and it comes with a well respected manual".

It is unlikely that I will buy C6, this is the downward spiral of Eovia into corporate greed. It will certainly come back to haunt them one day via the customer base. Over the next year it is likely that a competitor with a product as good as or better will lower their price, but keep the manual. I may give them a try. So how low will Eovia go and how much will they cut out in an effort to go after sales? It is a downward spiral once you start it.

Esterau .. it is hard to figure out what stance you take on this, you seem to move from one side of the fence to another. You either want and need a manual or you do not. The bottom line is this, you paid less and you did not get a manual. Bully for you. If you print your .pdf file out on your laser printer, then you have just racked up the cost for a manual by using your ink and your paper. How did you benefit? You did not ... but Eovia did. It is all in the marketing, you THINK you got a good deal, but the first time you print the .pdf file out or go the the bookstore and buy an aftermarket pub then the deal was not so good.

Charlesb ... the price of the product is not cheaper if the customer goes to buy the manual from Eovia or another aftermarket pub from a bookstore. Don't even try to act like Eovia has done anyone a favor. They have not! Eovia has just Wal-Marted Carrara!

Message edited on: 01/08/2006 08:07

It just doesn't seem like such a big deal to me. So yes it's nice to have a boxed version with a manual, and yes it is the norm with other software I have purchased, but all I'm saying is it really doesn't matter that much to me. And I can't see why you're so upset with carrara for using what seems to be a marketing ploy. Love esther

I am not upset, just making an observation. The manual is unimportant to you. You are willing to pay your money and take what you get. Eventually, you will likely print the .pdf. It is highly likely that most users WILL print the manual or most users WILL buy an aftermarket pub. What advanage was the original price of Carrara to you and them? That is what you are not understanding about this discussion.

Another side of this is that once a company takes that downward slide to corporate greed and begins cutting things such as manuals, it tends to continue in other aspects of the software. Eventually they drive the software into the ground. Has happened before, will happen again. As long as you accept less from a company, they will continue to offer you less.

I tend to usualy do my own thing and so I'm often different than most. If the manual is only electronic I would be happy with it. I've been building up such a pile of big manuals I began trashing them. Also it's so hard to get things delivered at my apartment. If I can get stuff on a disk only it fits in the mail box and won't get left on the door step for neighbors to swipe.

Maybe I've just had so many big manuals over the years I got sick of them and began using the electronic ones. Maybe I got sick of struggling and juggling with the stupid things while trying to follow the tutorials. You should see the massive C4DXL manual I have and all the others. I don't know...I never do most things like other people do. :D

I think I'm happy to hear there may not be another paper door stop with this release.

Message edited on: 01/08/2006 09:09

I find a PDF is very hard to book mark. I like dead trees filled with useful information in them. The problem with any 3D program is trying to cover all the features with out going over 700 pages, Once a book gets past this amount (give or take a few pages , according to the printer) They have to split the book into volumes or charge more because most printing equipment is not set up to print perfect bound any larger.

For around 20 dollars you can get a PDF printed at Lulu.com and have a very nice manual.

In the end it's not if it is printed or not, It what's in them that counts. Poser is an example of how not to write a manual.

Dale

Message edited on: 01/08/2006 14:16

Message edited on: 01/08/2006 14:18

Given a choice, most folks I know or have spoken with prefer paper manuals, not electronic or on-line networked manuals.

In the end it's not if it is printed or not, It what's in them that counts. Poser is an example of how not to write a manual.

So very true and a good example to give. We all know what happened to CL. Apparently,the included pdf with C5 has errors in it also and that is a part of this mosaic that I am painting. Eovia is so concerned about turning out a product and maintaining market share that they can not even be bothered to correct old errors as well as include correct new information about their software. They lower the price and leave the customer to buy aftermarket books which may or may not contain correct information.

If the pdf were corrected and contained all the new features then there would be a lot less to this picture. Spiraling down into darkness is never good, cutting corners on your way down is really not good.

Understand all, I am not upset, mad or angry with Eovia. I knew what I was getting when I paid for C5Pro. I am just putting together the pieces of this mosaic. Hopefully Eovia will not go the way of CL.

Message edited on: 01/08/2006 15:33

I ordered the box version in early December thinking it would come with a manual.I did not expect to show up til Jan.Well a few days later a box shows up on my doorstep. I was puzzled because it was still Dec.. Well it seems that Element 5 (shipping& billing company for Eovia)sent me the wrong software even though the order number matched on the invoice..Then I get a message saying it was charged to my credit card...To add insult to injury open my email and I get an offer from to save 20% off if I use the coupon..I called told them to cancel my order which got ignored because I received an email saying they were sorry and they were shipping it immediately...What??? How can they ship what they don't have..Well I called agained asked for a refund then waited a week an downloaded the electronic version...I am not impressed with Element 5. The program is great though love the changes

If the book is anything like the PDF manual I would not hold out for it..It looks like a patched up C4 manual with very little of explanation as to how the new functions work. It seems like a rush job...That is why I just came to this forum... Be sure to install the revison 2 it fixes lots of bugs..I found out about it on this forum you would think they could have already included it in the download version... So far I am very impressed with the program but I have got a hell of alot to learn....

Yes element5 is odd. Their records don't always add up.I have to say the way shipping is I actually like ESD..can get it when I want, easily. I don't need a box or commercial disc...I don't really use those just sw.Just gotta burn an inexpensive cd/dvd, which I usually pack w/ other goodies too. Paper manual might be nice, but after market books that cover tutorials are usually better, not always. In other words, manuals will never have a depth of project tutorials. They are pretty basic.They were public about the no manual tho from the announcment onward.

Babaluie just grow-up will you. The manual comes as a PDF file so new users and oldtime users get the same manual. If you want the printed version of the manual than you pay for the print version. YOU don't go buy it at a store you ask for it when you place your order and include the charge to your order and you get a printed manual. Your order is cheaper than C4Pro upgrade. For the ones that want the printed manual than don't request it when placing our order. Maybe the other here are getting the Carrara 5 handbook confuse with the manual and so they think they need to go buy the manual at a store...when in reality you don't. Ringo

Only person confused here is you Ringo .. below is the verbage off of the Eovia World Wide Store...

Carrara 5 PRO - English versions - Boxed Carrara 5 Pro - English versions

The boxed version of Eovia Carrara 5 includes a complete PDF (electronic) manual. A printed Carrara 5 manual will be available for sale separately.

.............
As you can see the printed Carrara 5 manual is not ready so one can not order it at the same time they place the order for C5. The presently included pdf file is inaccurate and is quite likely to not be the same as the soon to be released Carrara 5 manual.

Regardless of the price you pay, upgrade or full, you get an inaccurate pdf file and the grand opportunity to buy an aftermarket book.

By the way, at 49 years of age I am plenty grown up.

This thread is somewhat venemous and industrial to spite and sloth and avarice... I am ashamed that anonymous users are so quick to point fingers and propogate phrases like "yes men" and interject grandiose conspiricay theories of greed over a user manual. I can't beleive you actually think your arguments are just and true, they simply are not. They are repulsive and I feel bad for Charles being treated this way. The fact of the matter is that the user manual issue is a molehill on an otherwise majestic mountain range. These same people complain when their Triple Mocha Latte is 2 degrees under temperature. Back in the 90's before the tech bubble burst, software development took two years per version typically. There was less development competition because there were fewer applications and a wider gap and definately less capability. Back then devs and tech teams had ample time and resources to prepare the dust catchers called printed user manuals. Since those dark ages, development has skyrocketed because newer and better development applications exist today and as a result, new editions can be put out on a yearly basis if not sooner. This was unheard of a decade ago. The fact of the matter is, by the time you have finished reading your nice cushy manual with your slightly under-hot Triple Mocha latte, it has already been outdated by the first patch and what would you have a software company do, send you a patch manual? How idiotic can it get... I am done, do your best... Steven

I guess I don't feel quite as strong about it as some others, but I was rather perplexed when I got through the ordering process for the boxed version without seeing any option to add a printed manual. I was certainly hopeing to order one (I can only focus on a PDF on the computer screen for a short while before the eyes and mind go blurry), and I guess I am little upset at looking at two separate shipping charges. I had presumed part of the delay in the boxed version was getting the manual printed, and sort of wonder why Eovia just didn't delay the box shipping (at least for those of us who also wanted to order a printed manual) a bit longer and give people the option of ordering it. (However, I do appreciate Charles' consideration that the cost was reduced accordingly.) rj

I don't expect the printed manual to be any better than the lacking documentation in the PDF. But I'm still ordering the printed manual because I like to have a book for the software I use.

AT 1930hrs whilst watching cricket on TV my husband gets a phone call froma neighbour to say she received a parcel from fedex that was meant for me. Apparently she told the guy she wasn't lot 11 but he said too bad and drove away. well at 2135hrs when it's too late to go round to someone's house my husband just told me about it. That the neighbour will drop it here tomorrow. I've been sitting at the puter fidling around when I could have been installing carrara. Tomorrow I'm working all day until very late and the next day I have family comittments and then work and thenn more family stuff. And if it's not my new carrara I'll be so disappointed. Love esther okay I know I'm a 3d addict.