Access 2003: "Activation "???

[(Pete Cresswell)]

Just fired it up to see what it looked like.

They wanted me to "Activate" the product before the 50th use.
Geeze, I paid my money....now they want me to jump through their hoops?

Brings back unpleasant memories of Intuit's QuickBooks...

When did MS start this? It's not in 2000.
2002?

Did the activation thing just to see what would happen.
Not much, it turns out. "Registrati on" is a separate
issue and optional.

What did I do? Limit this copy/product code to working on a given PC?
Give away the farm?
--
PeteCresswell

[Larry Linson]

Office activation began with Office XP. Windows XP also requires activation.
It is only required for individuals and small businesses -- the corporate
volume license, where installation is assumed to be done by some
adminstrator via the network, doesn't require it.

The activation does identify the hardware -- by some combination and
manipulation of various hardware serial numbers. Thus if you replace your
computer and reinstall on a new one, you will likely have to explain the
situation to a 'Softie on the other end of a phone line to get a new
activation code. You are allowed, as I recall, to install an individual copy
of Office on your fixed machine and on a portable one, but aren't supposed
to use both at the same time. The people who really complained were those
who never had more than one person using office, but used to install on
their office, home, and notebook computers.

Some other vendors have been force by public resentment to eliminate this,
but not Microsoft (and, in fact, not all others who have implemented it).

There are some who contend that it is just a step along the way to a
pay-per-use model for charging for software. I wouldn't hazard a guess as to
Microsoft's _intent_, other than what they have stated "to control the
number of installations of a given copy".

It is interesting that all the examples of blatant extra installs that
'Softies quoted to me in support of it were with corporate licensees, to
whom it does not apply anyway.

Larry Linson

"(Pete Cresswell)" <x@y.z> wrote in message
news:u5******** *************** *********@4ax.c om...

Just fired it up to see what it looked like.

They wanted me to "Activate" the product before the 50th use.
Geeze, I paid my money....now they want me to jump through their hoops?

Brings back unpleasant memories of Intuit's QuickBooks...

When did MS start this? It's not in 2000.
2002?

Did the activation thing just to see what would happen.
Not much, it turns out. "Registrati on" is a separate
issue and optional.

What did I do? Limit this copy/product code to working on a given PC?
Give away the farm?
--
PeteCresswell

[Mike MacSween]

"Larry Linson" <bo*****@localh ost.not> wrote in message
news:SS******** ********@nwrddc 02.gnilink.net. ..

There are some who contend that it is just a step along the way to a
pay-per-use model for charging for software.

I wonder whether rented software wouldn't be a good thing (dons asbestos
suit), in some ways No, seriously gals and guys.

Not just many, but actually most things we use are actually, to some extent,
'rented'. Bought as a service. Water, gas, electric, telecomms, are the
obvious ones.

But cars too. We think we 'buy' the thing but unless we pay the various
'rentals', petrol (gasoline to you people over there -->), insurance,
servicing (especially servicing as I'm now learning, that's the last Ford I
buy, back to VW for me next time) we all know it's not got any actual
utility.

Buildings have to be maintained, machines oiled etc.

In fact I think it tends to be more in consumer's minds that the 'I bought
this box of Office 2000 and now it's all mine for ever' prevails. I expect
that corps who shell out £xx,xxx on Oracle expect to pay support costs (is
that how it works?)

Look at Microsoft. Many people, and I think I'm one of them, think that
Office 97 was the best version they released. Or rather, for the vast
majority of users I see there is no real need to 'upgrade' to anything later
than Office 97. I see plenty of people using Word, Excel, Access apps I've
written for them and to be honest I can hardly think of any new features in
Office 2000 or later that they desperately need. But Microsoft somehow has
to make money, and the only way they can do that is buy persuading them to
get the newer versions.

If it was rented there might not be 'versions'. 'Oh, we rent MS Office' or
'we rent Star Office' or whatever. The software company would have an income
stream and would gradually develop, debug, improve the product. Rather than
trying to think of '50 reasons to upgrade to Office 2009' or whatever.

Of course, it may not work like that at all. We'll see!

My 2 pence worth.

Mike

[david epsom dot com dot au]

The pirate copies of Office I see are the corporate version
That is an inherent weakness in the system. Companies that
don't have the same mix of corporate/personal clients would
be looking at different equation. As a developer, I would
be fascinated to see true estimates of the amount of business
MS has gained (or lost even) because of Office Activation.

(david)
"Larry Linson" <bo*****@localh ost.not> wrote in message
news:SS******** ********@nwrddc 02.gnilink.net. ..

Office activation began with Office XP. Windows XP also requires activation. It is only required for individuals and small businesses -- the corporate
volume license, where installation is assumed to be done by some
adminstrator via the network, doesn't require it.

The activation does identify the hardware -- by some combination and
manipulation of various hardware serial numbers. Thus if you replace your
computer and reinstall on a new one, you will likely have to explain the
situation to a 'Softie on the other end of a phone line to get a new
activation code. You are allowed, as I recall, to install an individual copy of Office on your fixed machine and on a portable one, but aren't supposed
to use both at the same time. The people who really complained were those
who never had more than one person using office, but used to install on
their office, home, and notebook computers.

Some other vendors have been force by public resentment to eliminate this,
but not Microsoft (and, in fact, not all others who have implemented it).

There are some who contend that it is just a step along the way to a
pay-per-use model for charging for software. I wouldn't hazard a guess as to Microsoft's _intent_, other than what they have stated "to control the
number of installations of a given copy".

It is interesting that all the examples of blatant extra installs that
'Softies quoted to me in support of it were with corporate licensees, to
whom it does not apply anyway.

Larry Linson

[(Pete Cresswell)]

RE/

But cars too. We think we 'buy' the thing but unless we pay the various
'rentals', petrol (gasoline to you people over there -->), insurance,
servicing (especially servicing as I'm now learning, that's the last Ford I
buy, back to VW for me next time) we all know it's not got any actual
utility.

Buildings have to be maintained, machines oiled etc.

Yes, I wouldn't want Ford to have the option of disabling my car's engine when
their marketing department decided they needed to sell more cars.
--
PeteCresswell

[(Pete Cresswell)]

RE/

Office activation began with Office XP.

XP=2002?
--
PeteCresswell

[Mike MacSween]

"(Pete Cresswell)" <x@y.z> wrote in message
news:lr******** *************** *********@4ax.c om...

RE/

But cars too. We think we 'buy' the thing but unless we pay the various
'rentals', petrol (gasoline to you people over there -->), insurance,
servicing (especially servicing as I'm now learning, that's the last Ford Ibuy, back to VW for me next time) we all know it's not got any actual
utility.

Buildings have to be maintained, machines oiled etc.
Yes, I wouldn't want Ford to have the option of disabling my car's engine

when their marketing department decided they needed to sell more cars.

Ha! It was the gearbox that got disabled. Sure, I take your point. I guess
it doesn't necessarily illuminate the issues by using analogies. After all,
software isn't really like any other product that we've had before.

Still, if you don't pay your ISP's bill you don't get to use their software
anymore. The wires will still be there (if you're on ADSL, dialup or
whatever) and you can probably still make telephone calls, but you can't use
their web server software, mail server software etc. It's only the fact that
that software is at some distance on their machines, rather than your own
that makes it seem different.

It sounds like I'm advocating software rental. Which I'm not really. I'm
actually fairly agnostic about it. It that's the way some companies go, like
MS, then for the reasons I stated originally I think it might be a good
thing. And I'm not being atall trivial or flippant or provocative, because I
think it makes a lot of sense for the reasons I've stated. Here's another.
When my mother has to pay £400 or whatever for a full version of Office, to
write the odd letter and so on, whereas a large corporate gets theirs for
perhaps £80 per copy (I was quoted at a large college I work at) where there
might be 100s of clerical workers bashing away all day, that doesn't seem
equitable either.

I'm not going to get upset about it, cause there's nothing I can do about
it, apart from going Linux and so on. Which as we all know is the future,
man <g>

Cheers, Mike

[David W. Fenton]

"(Pete Cresswell)" <x@y.z> wrote in
news:u5******** *************** *********@4ax.c om:

Just fired it up to see what it looked like.

They wanted me to "Activate" the product before the 50th use.
Geeze, I paid my money....now they want me to jump through their
hoops?

Brings back unpleasant memories of Intuit's QuickBooks...

When did MS start this? It's not in 2000.
Not true. It was not present in the original release of Office 2K,
but it was there in later releases.
2002?

Did the activation thing just to see what would happen.
Not much, it turns out. "Registrati on" is a separate
issue and optional.

What did I do? Limit this copy/product code to working on a
given PC? Give away the farm?

Well, legally speaking, you've always been limited by MS's licensing
terms to installing their products on only one PC at a time.

I've always preferred the Borland licensing agreement, which says
that you treat the software like a book, which can be read only in
one place at one time, and that if you install their software in
more than one place, it's for your own personal use so that two
people are not using it at one time.

This is not going to get easier.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act made all this possible and it's
only going to get more and more restrictive.

--
David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton
dfenton at bway dot net http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc

[David W. Fenton]

"Mike MacSween" <mi************ ***********@bti nternet.com> wrote in
news:40******** *************** @news.aaisp.net .uk:

If it was rented there might not be 'versions'. 'Oh, we rent MS
Office' or 'we rent Star Office' or whatever. The software company
would have an income stream and would gradually develop, debug,
improve the product. Rather than trying to think of '50 reasons to
upgrade to Office 2009' or whatever.

Don't you see that as an absolute disaster for Access applications?

I have clients who would, except for me having repeatedly cautioned
them about the fact that their Access app is wholly specific to a
particular Access version, think of their existing purchases of
Office in exactly the fashion you've described. I have to manage
their purchases of new equipment and make sure they don't attempt to
use their existing app with the new version of Access.

The usual procedure is that they buy the full Office Pro
pre-installed and when I set up the new PC, I remove Access from the
new PC and install the older version of Access for which their app
is designed. Occasionally extra work has to be done to get things
working properly (e.g., the licensing error, or DAO reference
problem), but it's a lot simpler than converting everyone to the
newer version (which wouldn't be legal, anyway, unless the client
spent tons of money on upgrades).

I have gotten a number of programming projects that came to me
specifically because the commercially available software to do the
same things had a large annual fee associated with it. The clients
involved preferred to shoulder the entire development expense
themselves rather than be tied to a particular vendor.

Keep in mind, also, that when you combine limited licenses with
activiation codes, if the software vendor goes out of business, you
could conceivably end up in a situation where you could not install
the software on a new PC at all, and lose access to all your data.
Because of this, I won't buy any more software that requires
activation unless the vendor has a key escrow plan (where they
deposit a universal key for unlocking the software for release by
the escrow holder only in the event that the original vendor goes
out of business and their assets are not purchased by another
company).

I won't upgrade my Finale music notation software unless the vendor
establishes a key escrow program, and I've told the vendor that.

I suppose it's unlikely Microsoft will ever go under, and, of
course, we have older versions of MS software that we could convert
back to for most things. But I'm very wary of activation in general
because you give up control of the data that you own to the vagaries
of the marketplace.

--
David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton
dfenton at bway dot net http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc

[David W. Fenton]

"Mike MacSween" <mi************ ***********@bti nternet.com> wrote in
news:40******** *************** @news.aaisp.net .uk:

if you don't pay your ISP's bill you don't get to use their
software anymore. The wires will still be there (if you're on
ADSL, dialup or whatever) and you can probably still make
telephone calls, but you can't use their web server software, mail
server software etc. It's only the fact that that software is at
some distance on their machines, rather than your own that makes
it seem different.

The ISP is providing a service that is measure in bandwidth, which
is time-based. It's rather different from software.

My cable company is finally forcing me to switch to a digital cable
box. They allow me to stay with the analog box, but they'd take away
all channels above 80 (and two of the channels I watch the most are
81 and 82). I hate the digital cable that Time Warner provides. I
have two friends with it, and it's really substandard, with lots of
audio dropouts and terrible picture decay. My analog signal on most
stations is much sharper than the picture my friends get with their
digital boxes.

But now I have to change, because they are no longer supporting the
product I want to use.

(and I don't know if my TiVo will work with the new box -- I'm
assuming there will be at least one IR definition will be able to
drive the digital cable box, but there's no guarantee with these
things)

Software subscriptions have the same disadvantages, because even
when they don't automatically keep you upgraded to the latest
version (which would be a disaster), they eventually drop support
for older versions, and since they hold all the cards under these
kind of activation routines, they could make it stop working after
they drop support (rather than just not providing support as MS does
with older software).

You won't see me recommending software subscriptions to any of my
clients.

Indeed, I hate the problems that come with anti-virus subscriptions,
which can force all sorts of problems onto client machines (it
happened to a client of mine in December, and they were forced to
upgrade from Norton 2002 to Norton 2004 to fix the problem!).

I don't like giving up control of the software environment on a PC
to an outside source, and subscription-based software gives me the
willies.

--
David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton
dfenton at bway dot net http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc