ACD/Labs Announces Millionth Freeware Download

Within eight years, ACD/Labs has managed to reach a major milestone: the 17th of May, 2006, marks the one millionth download of ACD/Labs freeware software components and products.

Coupled with this milestone, ACD/Labs also announces the 600,000th download of ACD/ChemSketch—a leading chemical drawing tool that is the interface for the industry's best NMR and molecular property predictions, nomenclature, and analytical data handling software.

In October 2002, ACD/Labs made the bold statement that we would grow from 400,000 to 1,000,000 downloads within five years, surpassing Moore's Law. Now, a short three and a half years later, we have passed our target and continue to add to our download total every day. We are optimistic that our success in this area will continue, and we will reach 2,000,000 downloads within five years.

Since 1998, ACD/Labs has been offering a freeware version of their popular chemical drawing package, ACD/ChemSketch (www.acdlabs.com/chemsketch/) to academic institutions and students. Every day another 500 downloads from our website distribute the power of this chemical structure drawing package to desktops around the world. Other freeware components include ACD/ChemBasic, a programming language for chemists that extends the capabilities of the drawing package and allows users to deliver additional functionality according to their needs. Also available are nomenclature and 3D molecular viewing modules for other software packages such as MDL ISIS, free databases for the ACD/ChemFolder software platform, chemical games for the PC and Palm platforms and many other useful utilities.

Another download is the ACD/I-Lab Add-on for ChemSketch. ACD/Labs has made their industry-leading predictors for NMR spectra, molecular physical properties, and IUPAC- and CAS Index-based systematic nomenclature available to academic researchers and instructors at affordable pay-per-use or subscription prices through our internet-based service, ACD/Labs Online (I-Lab). The ACD/Labs I-Lab add-on gives users instant access to chemical databases and property prediction algorithms and is used by thousands of chemists worldwide. For example, institution-wide subscriptions are deployed by organizations such as Stanford University in the USA, Toronto University in Canada, and ICSN/CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) in France.

ACD/Labs software has a large and varied impact on a major segment of the scientific community and is fueled by continual advances. ACD/Labs first made free software downloads available in April 1998, and its popularity has grown to almost a thousand new downloads every day; over 2 gigabytes of software. ACD/Labs has long been committed to helping the scientific community foster the academic growth of future scientists and provide the highest possible level of chemical education while maintaining superior research standards. As an example of the scope and reach of advancements being offered, we have extended ACD/ChemSketch to offer integration with the PubChem system (pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/). This integration gives ChemSketch users direct access to PubChem’s structure and substructure searches.

Included in the 1,000,000 downloaded products is ACD/Online Updater, which updates all ACD/Labs software programs simultaneously and obtains the latest bug fixes, import/export filters, and most up-to-date algorithms for your version of the software. Since our freeware offerings are updated regularly, this has become an essential way for our over half million freeware users to ensure that they receive the latest and greatest offerings.

Antony Williams, Ph.D., VP and Chief Science Officer at ACD/Labs, comments, “When ACD/ChemSketch was made available as freeware, our intention was simple: allow students worldwide, our future scientists, the ability to access some of the tools they may meet later in their career. This is also the driver behind our decision to provide ChemSketch site licenses to all academic facilities around the world. Now over half a million people, in literally every country in the world, have availed themselves of our offering. We are happy to provide these tools since the community continues to drive the need for our innovations, demand excellence of us, and support our efforts to enable better science through software.“