Product activation glitch hits Symantec

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No stop to piracy

Activation is for compu-stupids. I laugh when I read about people's activation problems. For example, the one about the publisher activation problem. About a month before office 2003 was released to the public a completely activated corp version was floating arount the warez world. All he had to do was go get this one and install it on all his machines and all his activation problems would be over.

Two days after NAV was released a good crack that defeated the activation was out.

In many instances instead of spending hours with some tech idiots you could go the right place and dl a cracked copy that works perfectly or a good crack or key gen that would solve your activation problems instantly.

Why purchase a new NAV anyway. You have two options reformat your hard drive and install your NAV again and you get a brand new year of online updates or get a small crack that gives updates for the next 20 years! Symantec deserves this anyway if they did not charge so damn much for renewal of subscription more people might actually be honest but of course the truth is they want you to repurchase the old package with a new face year after year which in my opinion is dishonest. I don't think any of the utilities in NSW have been improved for over 10 years! Besides there are a ton of utilities that do what they claim to do much better. It seems like they never bother to look at what others are doing to get ideas on how to improve thier products. Boy! I wish I had that stupid MBA from an ivy league school so I could get paid big $$ for the stupid decisions execs are making at these software companies.

Since norton is almost viral like itself attaching itself to everything it is almost impossible to remove and if you screw up an installion heaven forbid you are toast as many customers have found out. I am almost sure I will take a pass on the 2004 line.

Anyone who says windows activation works flawlessly must be joking. What do you mean by works? If the purpose was to stop piracy try checking the warez channels there are widows products galore available with gazillions of cracks and key generators available. Anyone who wants a windows product for free who has a minimal knowlege of how to search the internet can get it. So technically it might work ok but from a practical stand point it did not fulfill its purpose. All it means is that the average joe that has more then one pc in his house probably has not upgraded any of his 98 machines to xp which he might have done before.

I mean would anyone actually like to admit they bought more then one copy of an ms product due to activation to put on multiple machines at home? If you did I have some great swamp land in florida... I also have a bridge for sale...

Cracked autodesk products are easy to find if you want them.

The point is that to date no protection scheme has done anything to stop piracy. Minimal protection is adequate and necessary to keep piracy under control but overbearing protection like what was found in turbo-tax and now is in the symantec products hurts sales much more then it helps.

Software is like bulk bins at grocery stores. Stores could go to great lengths to insure that no product ever spilled on the floor or was sampled by customers but if you had say an employee constantly watching the bins and harrassing customers that sampled the bins people would say f this store or I didn't want that candy anyway. With software as with bulk bins you need to expect to give some away and be satisfied with the portion that you sell. Those that sample sometimes buy that never would have before anyway. On the other hand some will never buy so it really doesn't matter. There might be a million copies of autodesk around but 99% of those will never be used or installed so what difference does any copy protection make? Those bootleg copies will never ever translate into sales regardless of the protection used.

Finally the biggest joke is the corporate or vlp copies. Since none of these copies require activation guess what copies are likely to wind up in warez? Again by releasing a verion that does not require activation the whole reason for activation is defeated.

Conclusion all the money spent on activation schemes is a waste of resources and a customer relation nightmare.

Posted by: Robert Rice   Posted on: 11/01/03 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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