Altium gives customers free flat-screen monitors with Protel, P-CAD, and TASKING new licenses until June 30

Altium supports customers in trend towards designing with multiple monitors

SYDNEY, Australia – May 17, 2002 – Altium Limited (ASX: ALU), a leading developer of Windows-based electronic design and embedded development software, is pleased to announce a special offer that will enable its customers to gain productivity benefits from using multiple monitors with their design software.

In recognition of the productivity benefits gained with multimonitor setups, Altium is offering customers a free Samsung 18” flat panel LCD monitor with the purchase of a Protel or P-CAD full suite new license, and with TASKING toolset purchases of US$9,995 and above. This offer, which ends on June 28, 2002, emphasizes Altium’s commitment to breaking down the barriers to innovation and technological advancement by providing its customers with the tools they need to stay on the cutting edge of design. In addition, Altium’s Protel users will benefit from the native support for multi-monitor setups within the fully integrated design environment of the upcoming Protel DXP.

“Displaying onscreen information over more than one monitor has significantly increased productivity, especially for people dealing with large amounts of information on the desktop at any one time,” says Phil Loughhead, Protel Product Manager, Altium. “Due to the increasing complexity of electronics designs and the number of stages in the design process, electronics engineers and designers have several windows of information in different editors open at once. If they can reorganize this design data over two screens, they are able to decrease their visual clutter and improve their productivity.”

Another significant advantage of multiple monitors for electronics design is the ability to see two different parts of the design at once, without needing to switch back and forth between editors. For example, a designer can simultaneously look at the schematic on one monitor and compare it to the PCB or bill of materials on the other.

Although Loughhead estimates that only 5-10% of desktop designers currently take advantage of a multimonitor setup, he believes that a recent groundswell of interest could result in another 20% moving to this setup. “In the last 12 months, the necessary hardware to support a multimonitor setup – sufficiently large monitors and capable graphics cards – has only just become affordable for most designers. This pricing strongly complements the native support for multimonitor setups that has just become available with the release of operating systems such as Windows XP.”

Availability

For more product information, visit www.altium.com/products/specialoffers.htm or contact your local Altium Sales and Support Center.

About Altium Limited

Since the Company’s foundation in 1985 and its release of the world’s first Microsoft Windows-based EDA tool in 1991, Altium has continued to apply the most advanced software design methods to provide powerful, easy-to-use and affordable design software to engineers and electronics designers worldwide.

Altium’s current product brands include Protel, P-CAD, TASKING, Accolade, CircuitMaker and CAMtastic!. These products offer tailored solutions covering a range of hardware and software design processes.

Altium is headquartered in Sydney, Australia, and operates a number of sales and support offices in Australia, the United States, Japan and Europe, as well as maintaining a large reseller network in all other major markets. More information about the Company and its products and services may be obtained from our website at http://www.altium.com.

Altium USA Media Contact

Janice Hughes
Hughes Communications, Inc.
15 Oak Tree Lane
Lyme, CT 06371
USA
Telephone: +1 860 434 3782
Fax: +1 860 434 3781
Email: janice@hughescom.net

Corporate Media Contact

Jessica Maxwell
Altium Limited
Level 3, 12a Rodborough Road 
Frenchs Forest, NSW 2086 
Australia
http://www.altium.com
Telephone: +61 2 9975 7710
Fax: +61 2 9975 7720
Email: jessica.maxwell@altium.com.au