Just looked at KiCad...it doesn't have an autorouter.

Sorry, it's not even in the same class as Eagle then.

I will have to look at KiCad again (wasn't impressed last time) but I disagree with the Eagle analysis. The freeware license allows for 2-layer 4"x3.2" boards which is definitely enough for a lot of projects.

Even the completely full version for commercial use with no layer or size limitations is $1500 for schematic+PCB+autorouter. That's not the cheapest license, that's the most expensive one!

My university has the completely unlimited professional version site license -- it is NOT limited in board space or layers. And it was at a fair one-time no-yearly-fees no-dongles no-license-server price.

And I forgot to mention that Eagle doesn't screw you over with upgrade costs. When upgrading from version 4 to version 5 (which did include some major new features), the upgrade cost was very reasonable.

TOPSPICE is $500!!! And only for Windows.

No thanks.

It's quite likely you've been doing something wrong :-) I was at the same place, getting frustrated because perfectly reasonable circuits refuse to simulate. 99.9% of the time it was my fault, and it was a great learning opportunity. "Reasonable circuits" are not necessarily practical circuits. For example, you can put in an ideal switch into SPICE and cause brittleness, because practical circuit voltages and currents don't change instantaneously like ideal switches do. "But wait!", you say, "Inductor voltages can change instantaneously! That's what it says in my textbook!". No, they can't :-) There's a reason SPICE lets you specify an inductor's parasitic parallel capacitance.

Also, another source of brittleness/bugginess is poor third-party circuit models. I've downloaded some MOSFET models that just plain stunk.

BTW, LTSpice is my favorite simulator, hands down.

It's the changing college demographic. First, more non-traditional students that want to be able to work at home, at "work", on their own time, etc.

Second, more demanding traditional students that expect colleges to come with more amenities like better dorm rooms than what used to be the norm, private bathrooms, etc. The ability to work in the dorm room or "plug in" wirelessly anywhere on campus and do their homework is becoming an expectation.

We have computer-aided teaching studios now with no computers in them. Doesn't make sense when every student has a laptop. Soon we will not need any computer labs.

LTSpice for simulation, Eagle for schematic/PCB design.

In my experience, any tool that does both simulation and schematics is a) crap, or b) really expensive.

LTSpice is free, well supported and actively developed, high quality, and works well under Wine.

Eagle has native versions for Mac/Linux/Windows, has a great educational site license program (reasonable price, no yearly fees, no license server), does schematics+PCB+autorouting, is well supported with its own newsgroups (which are regularly attended by Eagle representatives), is scriptable, and in general is Not Evil.

I'm a big fan of FOSS but I hate to admit that best-effort programs like gEDA and KiCad just don't match up to Eagle.

If you want to see even more Win madness, take a look at these instructions (in three phases) for dealing with the DST problem on a Novell GroupWise e-mail system.

What a nightmare! And that's just for one (closed source, painful to use) application.

Now if my university were running an open-source mail server with proven software (*cough* Slackware *cough*) the upgrade would have gone something like this:

wget 'ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-1 0.2/patches/packages/glibc-zoneinfo-2.3.5-noarch-7 _slack10.2.tgz' upgradepkg glibc-zoneinfo-2.3.5-noarch-7_slack10.2.tgz