I think this thread is within the rules as I am not going to discuss pirate software but a couple of incidents I've had in the last 6 months that have led me to decide that I will never purchase any further software from the companies concerned.
The first incident is regarding a 3d render engine I purchased for which the protection scheme locks your license to the MAC address of the NIC inside your PC. I duly activated and all worked well. Late last year I upgraded my PC and wanted to transfer my license. The problem was that my initial license was tied to an integrated NIC on the motherboard of my old PC and so it wasn't possible to move this to my new motherboard. So I contacted the software company and they really didn't want to grant me a new license. They used the phrase "license transfer isn't really possible at this time". I decided to publically embarass them on their own forums and in a couple of days I had magically been granted a new license when they back tracked about what they originally said.
The second incident is for another piece of 3D software I recently purchased as an upgrade. The original version was serial number only protected. The new "upgraded" version appears to be hardware locked. Only a month after activating I bought a new,bigger hard drive and copied my 3D partition from the old HDD to the new one. The software in question no longer works and gives me a license error as I assume that the hardware locking ties to the HDD and no doubt other bits of hardware. I haven't contacted the software company yet but here is the crux of the matter....
I hand over my cash to the software companies and I TRUST THEM to supply me with working software even though I have to accept there will be bugs which may take months to be fixed. However these companies actually do not trust ME whatsoever and put in place stupid restrictions on how I use their software.
Anyone using a crack (and these do exist) are laughing at me quite literally.
I know this is a bit of a rant but I will no longer upgrade these products further. They have lost me as a customer. I have lots of other software that is serial number registered to me and the companies concerned respect my custom. They actually trust me not to abuse the licensing terms.
Surely there is a happy medium where the respect works both ways and I don't have to go, cap in hand, to the software companies ?
That is all....
The first incident is regarding a 3d render engine I purchased for which the protection scheme locks your license to the MAC address of the NIC inside your PC. I duly activated and all worked well. Late last year I upgraded my PC and wanted to transfer my license. The problem was that my initial license was tied to an integrated NIC on the motherboard of my old PC and so it wasn't possible to move this to my new motherboard. So I contacted the software company and they really didn't want to grant me a new license. They used the phrase "license transfer isn't really possible at this time". I decided to publically embarass them on their own forums and in a couple of days I had magically been granted a new license when they back tracked about what they originally said.
The second incident is for another piece of 3D software I recently purchased as an upgrade. The original version was serial number only protected. The new "upgraded" version appears to be hardware locked. Only a month after activating I bought a new,bigger hard drive and copied my 3D partition from the old HDD to the new one. The software in question no longer works and gives me a license error as I assume that the hardware locking ties to the HDD and no doubt other bits of hardware. I haven't contacted the software company yet but here is the crux of the matter....
I hand over my cash to the software companies and I TRUST THEM to supply me with working software even though I have to accept there will be bugs which may take months to be fixed. However these companies actually do not trust ME whatsoever and put in place stupid restrictions on how I use their software.
Anyone using a crack (and these do exist) are laughing at me quite literally.
I know this is a bit of a rant but I will no longer upgrade these products further. They have lost me as a customer. I have lots of other software that is serial number registered to me and the companies concerned respect my custom. They actually trust me not to abuse the licensing terms.
Surely there is a happy medium where the respect works both ways and I don't have to go, cap in hand, to the software companies ?
That is all....