The Story is Rarely How It is Portrayed

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This in response to an article published by Ralph Grabowski on his blog in which he accuses a magazine publisher of accepting money in return for exposure in their magazine, however what he doesn’t tell you is the money involved with most of his stories. I have reprinted part of his article below…

“Desktop Engineering charges CAD vendors $3,995 (see update below) to be featured as their “DE Pick of the Week.” Well, that’s the list price; in these economic times, deals abound.

Whatever the amount, the CAD vendor get a press release issued by Desktop Engineering, whose staff copies’n pastes the vendor’s name into a template, “…Selected Editor’s Pick of the Week by Desktop Engineering,” and then blasts it out by email.”

It’s interesting how everyone just assumes that what Ralph is saying is true, and also assumes that Ralph has never performed similar services for a wad of cash.

Ralph, it is somewhat disingenuous to on one hand jet set around the globe attending lavish parties and having all your creature comforts paid for by a vendor who is hoping for a great review, and on the other claiming your outrage at this practice of pay to play, acting like your squeaky clean, why? because you happend to print a small disclaimer in your articles about how the vendor paid your flight, hotel, and various meals.

Actually, you don’t always get that fact into your articles do you? http://bit.ly/PAYola

For the Record: progeCAD USA, selected as the editor’s pick of the week in Desktop Engineering Magazine for September 1st 2010, and the unwilling subject of this article, did not pay any amount of money to Desktop Engineering, or anybody else for that matter, to receive the selection. We actually were extremely pleased when we noticed the selection and felt somewhat vindicated due to all the fanfare that some in the press, most likely those vying for a free trip to China, have been giving essentially unproven, untested, and perhaps unreliable newcomers to the CAD market. After establishing progeCAD as the #1 AutoCAD replacement around the world, and building relationships with the CAD press in North America over the last 10 years we felt a justified sense of respect was given to our team for the hard work they have performed on progeCAD Professional, making it a serious technology for Computer Aided Design. It was not until you ran this article that we determined involvement of the manufacturer.

However, I can’t think of anyone from our company, or even our customers who would feel progeCAD would have to pay money to deserve to be recognized as anything less than a top of the line CAD solution.

Here, one of our customers expresses it much better than I can: “The 2010 edition is absolutely fantastic, I am running Windows 7 Ultimate and the 2007 did not work well with it, but 2010 is a whole new world.
The ease of use is greatly enhanced, the interface is extremely user friendly and the overall product is a delight to work with.
I have and will continue to recommend progeCAD to anyone looking for a fully functional CAD program that is both full featured and economical.
Plus with all the other pluses you have exhibited one trait that in my book blows you way past and above all others, your attention to and care of customers. I guarantee you Autodesk, Microsoft, and many others could all learn from your customer care program.
Again Scott thank you and all there for your help.” John Sulpher

And by the way Ralph, we didn’t pay him to say that, he actually had just finished paying us, for progeCAD.

Thank you,

Scott Hucke
CEO
progeCAD USA / iCADsales.com LLC

Free 30-day trial of progeCAD 2010 Professional: Click Here to download…