Questions about Siemens WinCC and S7

Good Morning ,

I have been working with nothing but AB the last 5 years and
there is a few things that I would like to do at another plant that
is nothing but Siemens. But I have somewhat missed out on some of
the new products that Siemens have. So I have a few questions:

1. What differences are they between WinCC and RS View Studio,
Runtime ,Tags , user friendly ,Price ,etc?
2. What about the price of runtime packages,what do they run
on average?
3. What about the S7-200 Plc, can you use Step 7 Simatic Manager
software or does that have its own, or does Step7 Simatic
Manager only work with the S7-300 and S7-400.

Thanks,

Hi Rob.
I'll try to answer your questions.

1. Be sure to know if it is WinCC or WinCC Flexible. They are very different.
WinCC is similar to RSView SE.
WinCC Flexible is similar to RSView ME.
As to "user friendly" then let us just say that WinCC Flexible is a problem child. Search this forum and you will know.

2. WinCC is very expensive.
A 1024 tags RT license costs you 6000 USD.
A 1025 tags RT/CS license costs you 10000 USD.

WinCC Flex PC RT is less expensive.
A 128 tags RT license is approx 500 USD.
A 512 tags RT license is approx 2000 USD.
A 2048 tags RT license is approx 3000 USD.
WinCC Flex advance for programming the RT costs approx 3000 USD.

3. The programming software for S7-200 is called "S7-MicroWin". For S7-300/400 it is called "STEP7".
There are rumors that a new generation S7-200 is on the way that will work with the same STEP7 software as S7-300/400.