Doug, If you are seriously interested, try gaining access to their Altium support forum. I have the new tools but we haven't deployed them yet and even then we don't do use their simulation tools (I do not know historically why that is, but probably an issue going back to the day that the decision was made).
If you can't easily gain access, contact them via email and I am sure they will allow you access as a potential customer wanting to research the state of the package. The forum can be searched and the other tool you could try would be searching their "Knowledge Base" for relevant information. I would also go through their user guides (there are a large number of them on the website), their multimedia demos and even their white papers.
I used PADs for years and found it very usable in it's day. However that day was back in the early to mid 90s and the package is still stuck there. I agree that for today's market it is very "clunky". It can also get very expensive when you start wanting any advanced features because you end up having to buy so many additional high end modules in order to get the features you actually want.
--
Sincerely,
Brad Velander.
"pcbdoug" wrote in message
news:1142527261.157427.65140@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>I am trying to evaluate some of the lower-end PCB design packages to
> select
> one for use in my workplace. So far, Altium is looking pretty good.
>>From what
> I see on their website, they seem heavily oriented toward FPGA issues,
> whereas
> we are doing much simpler schematic/simulation/PCB design. Would it
> still be
> good for this, or expensive overkill?