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Quote:
Originally Posted by DerekAsirvadem View Post
Ok, I will give it a go.

Last time I looked (and please, I am not a CD expert), CD was five products and $1,400. Now why would there be five separate CD products, why would I want five separate products, when I have one OG for $200 (ok, it was $50 when I bought it !). Even if you take CDProject (vs OmniPlan) out, you're still looking at $1,200 vs $200. I am not saying they are all different, and you need all five; but you do need three or four to equal OGP. So I don't know how you came up with equal dollars.
When I was searching the Net for reviews I noticed that people were mentioning huge price difference. Maybe they have dropped the price, I don't know. I can see that CDP is €199 including few plug-ins (network diagramming included). The full Office suit is €415. That's what's prompted me to compare the two. I don't need full Office set, all I need is replacement to Visio and my understanding is that CDP alone is enough.

Quote:
Originally Posted by DerekAsirvadem View Post
Can you draw something in CDMindMap and open it in CDPro ? Vice versa ? What are the limitations of each product (another way of asking, why are there five) ?
I think it has changed considerably since you looked at it last time. I don't know why would I need CDMindMap? I think it's something like OmniOutliner rather than OmniGraffle.

Quote:
Originally Posted by DerekAsirvadem View Post
But the problem is, you sound like you already have a handle on the comparison ...
Not really. My first impression with OG stencils was disappointing. I found it short of what I needed compared to Visio. And when I moved some of the stencils from Visio to OG, it didn't behave the same way or at least it didn't for me.

In fairness CDP is not 100% Visio friendly either. So my first impression was based purely on stencils alone. The reason I asked here for help was partly because of this. I felt that I must have misunderstood something because I can't be the only one who would like to see a better set of stencils. How do you find OG stencils for networking diagrams? I was reading Earl's post and scratching my head how the heck did he manage to put this together in 30 minutes given that I can't find any of the stencils he used in OG 5 ( I know he used v4, but still. Has they changed stencils in OG 5 and where would they hide v4 ones? ). It must be me hastily testing the product. I can't imagine that stencils in Earl's example have been removed from OG in the new version or he managed to create the whole set within the same 30 minutes. I must ask him about it.

One thing I see in OG that CDP is missing is layers. I mean they also have layers, but it's different approach and OG's I like better.

I've being playing more with CDP after my last post (unfortunately my OG trial period run out few days after I found CDP and I can't continue comparing the two in parallel) and I found that Visio support in CDP, that was looking a bit better at first glance, is not as flawless as it seemed.

I think it's to be expected given M$ reputation to keep their standards secret as long as they can. That makes collaboration with M$ only people quite difficult. I know I can ask them to save Visio diagram as an image or a PDF, but that makes very difficult (or even impossible. depends on the diagram complexity) to make quick amendment to the diagram and send it back to the person. Bloody M$!

On a final note, I see very robust and friendly OG community ;-) and people seems to be happy with OG. I must try and wipe out OG's directory in ~/Library and see if re-install gives me another chance to test drive it.

Thanks a million, guys! Your answers help a lot.