I was on version 9.13 and was prompted for an update. I updated to subversion 9.49 and found out that my license did not work anymore!? Why do we need to pay for a subversion .49 upgrade.
Lucky for me i found a link to 9.18.... which was a free update. Pay for a .49 update?? I think that's stupid.
Other that that i think AbsoluteTelnet are a great application.
The ability to upgrade for free really depends on how long since you purchased, not so much the version numbers. When you purchase, you get one year of free upgrades. I guess the deal has always been that you can download and try any new version for free using a lite or demo license code. If you like it, you can upgrade your pro license, or if you don't you can return the version you were at before.
Hope this helps.
Brian
Personally a years worth of upgrades for a quality product does not seem stupid to me. By paying for the work this guy does we ensure ourselves that the product will continue to improve.
I have used absolute since version 3 and thankfully it has gotten better and better. I use it for my work and it never fails me and I do not have to think about how I will SSH. I missed a version or so because times got tough for me. Hopefully I will be upgrading from 9.12 to 9.49 soon.
Some software rip offs won't even supply an old download that you've paid for if there is a new version posted. Anytime I reinstall my OS, etc I can come back here, log in and download the version I paid for. If he wanted to be a jerk he could force me to pay for the new version in order to get any version. Plus he has an easy to lookup lic system. he could leave you on your own to search through tons of your own records to find your key.
Or one could go download some open source SSH client, write scripts and hacks to get it to do what they need. Then later on do all that again when the open source project shuts down. No thank you. I have real work to do and absolute allows me to focus on my work and not how I will connect to servers.
For the record, I don't know this guy personally and don't think I have ever even talked to him in email. Absolute is just good software and my interaction with the website has always been top notch.
I think the policy is fine. Paying for updates after a certain amount of time is not just fair, it's likely critical to maintaining a viable business model. What would be helpful to the user (and the may already be in place -- we just upgraded to the latest) is for the popup to have an additional option. Either [ol][li]Dismiss[/li] [li]Update to most recent included update (if there is one) or[/li][li]Update to most recent product.[/li][/ol]
It would also be a little less in your face if it only appeared every four or five startups instead of every time it starts.
