Trial from 60 to 6 days?

[Zagor]

Hello
My Avast Pro Trial, since I installed it (a week ago) worked just fine. But in last couple of days it is showing the next info during program startup "demo version expires in 6 days". Reinstalled it, doesn't work. Download and installed new version, nothing.
Does anybody know what this is all about?
    

[szc]

Check the date on your system...

[Zagor]

OS date is fine.

[szc]

Strange, maybe someone from Alwil can shed some light on this one... I hope...

Hey Serbia, have you used avast! Pro trial before ? Maybe it's reading some information from the registry and it won't allow you to re-test it again... I don't know...

P.S. What part of Serbia are you if it's not a secret ? We all are very good friends in this forum and we even posted our photos in one of those threads in off-topic forum...

[DavidR]

If you uninstall it, it is assumed that you have completed your trial and one of the anti-piracy checks/elements stops it starting another 60 day trial and as far as I'm aware you then have a limited time to either buy a license or register for the Home version and get a free registration key emailed to you.

So if you have ever had the Pro trial installed or uninstalled the anti-piracy kicks in.

[szc]

Just as I though and mentioned up there, but wasn't so sure that it is a case with avast! Pro trial.

[Zagor]

I've never had avastPro before!
Could it be the free version, olthough I doubt myself?

[Zagor]

It's strange.
Two days ago it said 'you have 6 days left'
Reinstall today, '6 days again'
??

[Lisandro]

Reinstall today, '6 days again'

The second installing of the Trial version decrease the trial period from 60 to 6 days.
This is an antipiracy feature. You can ask for an 'extra' period to the programmers, explaining what happened and posting a link to this thread.

[roundtrip]

Seriously, Alwil need to look at this antipiracy protection! Here's my story as a reseller...

Installed the trial version of Avast Pro onto a brand new customer laptop last night. Got a call within an hour to say they were having problems with email. Upon investigation today I discovered that Avast was crashing on startup. I had to uninstall and reinstall it and the trial period went to 6 days instead of remaining at 58 or 59 days.

This customer will most probably not purchase Avast based on a 6 day trial, especially after I told them they would have 60 days to decide!

The antipiracy measure should work by keeping track of the time remaining and reinstate any remainder of the trial period not cut it down to 6 days! 

An alternative would be to have a mechanism to issue a 60 day trial license key to customers with this problem. Alwil can then track which customer has already been given a trial license key to fix an issue which forced a reinstall.

Please do something about this! A customer needs the full 60 day trial and we need for them to have the full 60 days to get the license sale. This antipiracy is costing Alwil business and new customers IMHO.

[Lisandro]

The antipiracy measure should work by keeping track of the time remaining and reinstate any remainder of the trial period

I'm not sure if this way we will have a real antipiracy feature as the cracks, maybe, will be able to change the remainder date, etc. 

An alternative would be to have a mechanism to issue a 60 day trial license key to customers with this problem.

This key would be able to be used by any other user, installing and reinstalling... this wouldn't be antipiracy, on contrary 

Alwil can then track which customer has already been given a trial license key to fix an issue which forced a reinstall.

Ok... maybe this is possible. 

Please do something about this! A customer needs the full 60 day trial and we need for them to have the full 60 days to get the license sale. This antipiracy is costing Alwil business and new customers IMHO.

Well... this is not that frequently... generally the problems on the first installation of avast that you've experienced are very rare.
avast shouldn't be crashing on startup...  :'(

[roundtrip]

Well... this is not that frequently... generally the problems on the first installation of avast that you've experienced are very rare.

I've seen issues quite a few times now that have required a reinstall of a trial version and the resulting lowering of the expiry period! There will be many occasions when trial users will simply try another AV product if they have problems days after installation. Why bother trying to fault find a product that is causing them issues when there are loads of other competing products they can try instead?

The 60 to 6 day antipiracy measure isn't one! There are cracks, hacks and serials available to those who look hard enough on the net.

This is nearly as bad a scheme as Windows Genuine Advantage :-(.

Here's a better scheme for antipiracy...

Make the default installation a 7 day and have a registration mechanism that allows this to be extended to a 60 day trial e.g. a webpage. Alternatively, make the registration a required step to activate the trial period from the moment it is installed. Alwil marketing can even use this as a mechanism to engage with the potential end customers.