Better download experience for labVIEW and associated NI tools

[gsussman]

As of this quarter, the NI developers suite DVDs will only be sent out on a bi-annual basis. See the text in the current Dev Suite donwload site for the text on this (Dev Suite Download Site).

With that in mind, I forsee using the donwload links to get my Dev Suite updates more and more often and using the DVDs less and less.

What I am asking is that a better method be implemented to allow customers to download the software that they need. If you attempt to download any package from the Dev Suite download site, listed above, you must click through between 3 and 4 linked pages to actually arrive at the download link. Given the 46 packages on the page that is a minimum of 138 pages that must be navigated to download Dev Suite.

How about updating the downloader to allow selection of all of the packages you wish to download, press the button and the downloader will take care of getting all of the selected packages.

This downloader should allow download of particular versions of the software (i.e All packages that were released with LV2009 SP1 and the applicable drivers at that time). These should be "presets" that would allow quick identification of which drivers shipped with which version of LV.

Jim Kring had a related post (here), however I think that the two ideas are somewhat different

[RavensFan]

That's interesting that they said it was quarterly shipments.  I swear I have only seen 3 packages a year for the past few years.

[LewDrake]

My Internet connection is a T1 (download speed is 1.5 Mb/sec).  It took me about 7 hours to download the 3.9 GB NI Device Drivers - February 2011 Release [dcd_feb11.exe].  During installation, I had to stop the program before it completed installing.  Then I found that dcd_feb11.exe had auto-erased.  And, I could not recover from that by retrieving it from the Trash.
 
That was VERY ANNOYING. I request that this auto-erase feature be removed or modified to ask permission before trashing the file.  I have no alternative but to download it again because NI has made a new policy to stop mailing the update DVDs for the Developer Suite.

Please remove the auto-delete feature from all downloads.

[SMeserve]

Hi Ravens Fan,

The schedule from here on out will be two shipments a year, one in February and one in August.  While this doesn't rule out the possibility of off-cycle updates such as patches, the shipments will be bi-annual from now on. Thanks.

[EdDickens]

This could made even easier fi you were also allowed to enter your serial number and all your authorized software would be automatically added. From there you could remove items that you do not need to download.