schematic entry
good point, chippie. I tend to overlook anything from M$oft, even though their software runs my machine at times :?. I still think that basic schematic programs are superior to paint programs, because they're designed for a specific purpose, with little excess baggage. At least they should be, and I'll try to patronize the ones that fit the description...
It's worth spending an evening or two trying some of the free ones; some are far more intuitive than others. Of course "intuitive's" a slippery word...
I spent one night trying out several freely available schematic programs, and here are the two sticking points I noticed:
1) Non-standard formats. Many of the board vendors provide excellent schematic entry packages, yet save data in a proprietary format that requires special viewers to read. Good luck with that.
2)Non-MS packages. I really wanted to use Xcircuit on this machine, but the cygwin libraries take up quite a bit of space, and it requires an Xserver running on windows. When I have time I'll try again, but Xcircuit is really meant for linux/unix.
By the end of the evening, I'd found that TinyCad & Irfanview together did the job with a small learning curve. It's just one opinion, I'd like to hear more...