Hello,
After several years of offering the molecular biology software VectorNTI
free to the academic community (their "open access program") and building
up a huge user base, Invitrogen have suddenly announced that they will no
longer renew these free licences and the existing ones will be left to
expire within the year. There are heavy renewal fees for anyone wishing to
continue use of this software.

Can anyone recommend decent alternative PC compatible alternatives? Main
uses are construct and primer design, plus simple quick alignments,
sequence data analysis etc. The database structure for storing sequences
was pretty useful also.

Ideally free, otherwise reasonably priced. I've seen CLCbio and Geneious
have products, both free and paid. Any experience?

Thanks,
Darren
EMBL Grenoble

ps anyone using VNTI might consider a backup of their work by exporting
files to .gb format. I don't know if a locked up (expired) version permits
this and you will have no notice that it is about to expire.