If it makes anyone feel any better, there is a much worse copy protection scheme out there than Finale 2004's challenge-response scheme, and, believe it or not, even worse than Sibelius'.
Try upgrading Logic versions from emagic. Firstly there is a brand-new dongle that has to be plugged into the USB port (yeah, like that's really reliable). Secondly, there is also a challenge-response system by which you have to fill in your details on an EXACT piece of paper, in an EXACT envelope, with your EXACT original CD and original old dongle to be sent to your distributor, at your own expense, who then forwards it by mail to Germany. Eventually they email your return code back (mine took about 9 weeks). Add to that stupid things like offering to take a week off your pre-registration period if your date/time is set incorrectly on your computer or asking you if the date of your computer is correct when you're trying to start up the application after not using it for a while (it is, but the application thinks it isn't - it doesn't take into account different time zones) and you're feeling right nasty. To make it even worse, in order to upgrade from, say, Logic 4 to Logic 6, you also have to pay the full expensive upgrade fee to Logic 5, even though you didn't get to use it, it all adds up to a giant "I'd prefer to use a cracked version" disaster. I think there's a circle in Hell for the paranoid programmers who conceived this rubbish, and I sincerely hope that Makemusic doesn't decide to follow their lead. The other thing is that at least Sibelius lets you transfer "activation codes" from one computer to another. It would be good if Finale would allow this, for those of us who own and use more than two computers (e.g. Mac desktop, PC desktop and Mac laptop). I wonder if the product activation code will apply to the use of Virtual PC on a Mac? Does that count as one computer, or two? -- Matthew Hindson http://hindson.com.au note new email address: add .au to end of old one _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
