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Cost of student version of IDL [message #80073]

Tue, 08 May 2012 08:21

Kenneth P. Bowman
Messages: 585
Registered: May 2000

Senior Member

I am going back into the classroom next fall to teach IDL to undergraduates
after spending the last few years as department head. The course alternates
between IDL and Matlab, and we have talked about adding a Python version section.

I am working on ways to get students to spend more time outside of class reading
my book and working IDL examples in order to create more time in class to work
with students individually.

To accomplish this, students need to have a copy of IDL on their personal
computers. I looked at the Exelis website yesterday and found that the student
edition of IDL is $89 ($149 with the IMSL library). That didn't seem too bad
until I realized that that price is for a 1-year license! So a sophomore taking
my course would need to pay at least $270 to keep a working IDL license until
graduation. Knowing students as I do, most will simply let their licenses
lapse.

For reference, my IDL textbook is $42 on Amazon. When my text was first
released (2006), a non-expiring student IDL license was $49.

We make IDL available in our labs, but the inconvenience of coming to the campus
guarantees that students will only use IDL when they *have* to.

For comparison, I see that Mathworks charges $99 for a student Matlab license
with no time limit. �They require proof of enrollment to move the license to a
new machine after 4 years, and they charge for upgrades.

In the current environment (with free alternatives like Python), does the IDL
student pricing make sense to anyone?

Has anyone worked out better ways to get students access to IDL?

Ken Bowman

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[Message index]

		Cost of student version of IDL By: Kenneth P. Bowman on Tue, 08 May 2012 08:21
		Re: Cost of student version of IDL By: ben.bighair on Mon, 14 May 2012 12:38
		Re: Cost of student version of IDL By: chris_torrence@NOSPAM on Fri, 25 May 2012 07:37
		Re: Cost of student version of IDL By: d.poreh on Thu, 31 May 2012 00:24
		Re: Cost of student version of IDL By: Teddy Allen on Wed, 30 May 2012 13:45
		Re: Cost of student version of IDL By: JM[2] on Tue, 07 August 2012 04:48
		Re: Cost of student version of IDL By: Sergey Anfinogentov on Sun, 02 September 2012 07:16

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