Editor's Note: This comment was moved from the RollBack Rx comments board, where it originally appeared.Hallo,
because of the license discussion I´ll write
my personal experience and consideration about tthe consequences of extremely limited online activation with hardware footprint.
(Hope I´m allowed to explain a little more (if not bdj may shorten my posting , hopefully publishing the essentials)
I think it is a diffcult problem, since it requires to combine the interests of users and developers - and both should have the right to be protected.
In times where (formerly serious) pc- magazines try to increase there sales figures by dubious headlines, which can´t be in the interest of software-,
music film-industry, it is really understandable that companies want to protect their productsl
But inbetween we seem to have a situation in which one also has to aski what kind of gurantiee / protection customers of software have:
At the beginning of online-/ hardware-footprint activation I didn´t give much thought to the activation - topic: I tested various software products, and if it seemed
to be useful to me I decided to support the developer by purchasing or donating. .I thought, that the activation should hardly cause any problems,because using the software according to the license policy
(but who really expects that he will experience that "murphy happens".)
But inbetween I really regret that I did not pay more attention regarding the kind of activation when making the decision for or against buying a product.
The last 4 months tought me that the activation topic is really crucial .The comment "contact us via email..." seems simple- and won´t be a problem If one has very few programs installed - windows and perhaps
an office suite and little more.In case of system reinstalling or hardware crash,one can of course try to cantact the company via email or hotline - and since those products are usually sold by very big, famous companies which have a reliable support
(e.g. microsoft, adobe,..) one usually can solve the problem soonly.
But if you have purchased many software, partly from companies with less manpower, with very restrictive activation and you will have to contact about 50 companies and to explain, why you need another activation
a systemcrash becomes a time- and money-consuming nightmare.
(and tha´ts my own experience - not all companies respond and so I had spent money for a software that I had bought less than 2 months before harddisk crash
- what meant I had paid for a lifetime license, but in practise I paid for using the software 7 weeks! (program not offered at bdj)
Having installed many software which restrictive activation policy can give the customer the feeling of playing roulette (and I´m not a person, which wants to go to a casino)
Even before the bad experience of 5 system crashes
I noticed, tthat the handling of using my PC changed, because it was more and more acompanied by the fear of loosing licenses or at least running into time-consuming procedures
- the more money I spent on software the less I was free to use the PC in the way I had done before this kind of activation:
!. The PC-manufacturer had told ma that one should at least make one complete new system - installation / year, because usually windows would slow down and have more and more problems
(that´s my experience too, but I avoided to do this because I didn´t want to loose my licenses.
2. It often hold me back from trying /buying other software - since I didin´t want to increase the risk of system-instability
´(a special testing-shareware partition does not really solve the problem, because one often has to know, if the software one considers to buy is really compatble or improving the already
i nstalled ones )
- so over the time this will be a disadvantage for other software-producer, since many people won´t buy their programs when testing them is a risk for loosing licenses in case of affecting the existing installation
3. it hold me back from buying a new PC/NB equipment (although already 6 years old, apart from the 2 year old, crashed, now replaced harddisk, ,..)
the value of the installed software exceeds the value of all my hardware equipment at multiple.
4. Not having installed the software I paid for, because of not having the gurantee that I´ll be able to reinstall it in case I soonly have to replace my (6year old) NB) and so waiting until purachase of a new one,
although I´ve already spent the money for the software
5. it pulled away the naturalness and caused many stress when using the pc, since one no more can "play" with it (I con´t mean playing games, just trying out various programs,..)
What´s the conclusion: many of the programs I bought should have been useful additions, which should make work with the pc and other software more comfortable - only some of them are essential
(like office suite, photo-editing,..) and now reflecting the usage I´ve to say that those programs which have reasonable license policies have been a good decision to purchase, but those programs
which lead the user to live in the permanent fear of having a systemcrash or holding back from reasonable soft-and hardware improvements
increased the stress and the disadvantage of that exceeds the usefulness by far and I wouldn´t buy them under these conditions again
And just to add the information, the necessarity to make 5 new installations within 4 months had been caused 4x by updates / upgrades of really expensive commercial software (some hundred dollars)
and 1x by harddisk crash (harddisk was less than 2 years old, NB only used as desktop-replacement) So I was tought that even I tried to be extremeley careful in using my NB
it did not protect me from haviing to reinstall and replace hardware within a short time.
And apart from this my experience generally is, when running into software or hardware- problems, the support gives some instruction - and when they don´t work, one is told to reinstall the system or
use the recovery cd from the manufacture - and even lifetime-licenses don´t make sense, when already such situations leadd to trouble or loosing them.
So please aologize my long explanations (and mistakes in english language), but I think it is important to consider interests of customers and developers.
I could imagine, that - at least for many people - a compromise could be found in form of blacklisting licensenumbers and (if thats not enough) giving the customer the opprutunity to make an online
deactivation of the software and than allow the reactivation (without touching the activation counter) - this would at least cover most of the planned system-changes and allow the user to handle
his pc and software more relaxed. And since even new hardware is no gurantee for not having a hardware-crash the policy should at least allow a few more installations
(as I wrote above - contacting very few companies is not the problem, but the more software-companies you have to contact, the worse).
Thank you for considering
with kind regards
H.H:
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