Mach3 has been a little buggy lately, losing steps, dropping my soft limit settings, etc.
 I was thinking of trying out Mach4.
 Is the 30 day trial version exactly the same as the paid version?

Mach3 has been a little buggy lately, losing steps, dropping my soft limit settings, etc.

That is not a fault of Mach3.

Tweakie.

The DEMO version of Mach4 is not a 30 day trial.

It will run forever when the motion device is the Simulator.

It will run for about 5 minutes of cutting time after each startup
when used with a real motion controller. After that, you must
shut down Mach4 and start it again. There is no limit to the
number of times you can do this.

As best I know there are no features suppressed while in the
DEMO mode.

Hi,
as Steve points out with the Sim(ulator) motion plugin you can download Mach4 for free and experiment as long as you like. The Sim plugin
does not allow you to control a machine. To do so means you need a real motion controller. The cheapest is Darwin parallel port plugin for $25.
Like the Mach3 parallel port it requires a 32bit Windows7 or earlier PC. Even then the functions of the Darwin plugin are limited but it is still the cheapest
way to get Mach4 to control a machine.

Mach4 is at its best and is really intended for an external motion controller. There are seven companies who make them, all of them have been around
the Mach scene for a while and all have a good reputation. The down side is that if you want to try Mach4 and actually cut something then you'll
have to buy one. The cheapest, without buying a Chinese knockoff, is $120.

Craig

Joe and Steve,
 Thank you.
 After doing the research, and reading these posts, I may stay with Mach3 for now and try to work out the problems.
 Learning and setting up Mach3 was difficult enough, and with the holidays approaching, I won't have the time or energy to do and buy all that is necessary to get mach4 up and running.
 I believe that will be a project for this spring.