Last week I had a call from the company that sells the accounting package I use. They had a special upgrade offer going, and since it was on my todo list to upgrade I decided to upgrade. The package arrived this week and last night I went install it. Unusually (well for me at least) I decided to read the doco that came with the disk, and wouldn't ya know it, the product requires activation. If anything drives me nuts it's activation, having had several bad experiences with activation and Microsoft products I vowed never to user products that require activation again. Sadly, that's becoming nigh on impossible these days.
For some products it's not so critical, but accounting software is a critical part of any business and I won't be put in a position where I can't use it. This particular package requires “re-activation“ every 4-9 months. Have you ever heard of anything so rediculous! Of course they didn't mention this when they sold me the upgrade.
A word to the wise for software vendors, if you use activation and you have a competitor who doesn't, guess which product I'll be buying( and I'm sure I'm not alone). As for the accounting upgrade, well I'm now looking at alternatives and if I find a decent one I'll be returning the upgrade and switching to one of their competitors.
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