Slashdot Mirror
What Turns You Off About Evaluation Software?
An Anonymous Coward asks: "I work at a mid-tier software company (which shall remain nameless, lest I draw attention to myself). Recently we have started making 30 day evaluation versions of our software available for download after prospects register. An email containing a username and password is sent to the registrant a few hours after submission. We have been surprised to find that not a few registrants don't actually go on to download the software. We make the file size and system requirements clear up front. I would guess some slashdot readers get involved in evaluations. What process do you go through? Why might you stop short of actually downloading the software?"
If it wants a valid email addy, I forget it and find something else. say no to spam
A large factor in my downloading a piece of evaluation is whether there is a crack available for it. If there isn't a crack then if the evaluation isn't hindered in any way for the amount of time it is allowed to be evaluated would be a factor. Of course, usefulness of the software is a large portion as well. Assuming there is a crack, then if the software is used frequently it would get paid for sometime.
In the words of Veruka, "but I want it NOW!"...
If the link/password/whatever hasn't hit my inbox in a minute or two, I'm probably moving on looking for another thing to try. Welcome to the short attention span decade.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Unless I really need the software I avoid registration processes such as those that you require. I do not like to give out personal informaiton, including e-mail addresses, just evaluate software. Not only am I concerned about spam, I abhor receiving e-mails from the sales staff of the company, especially if I state that I do not want to receive e-mail from the company if that option is available. If you want people to evaluate the software and purchase it after the evaluation period is through, provide a warning at the end of the eval which links the user to the comany website where they can purchase the software. If they truly want to buy it they will. Also, offer a link in the help menu which directs the user to the web storefront where they can buy the software should they decide to do so before the eval period is up.
Joel's rule: every barrier to implementation reduces your customer base by 50%
http://www.joelonsoftware.com
By know you may have already realized the long delay to receive username/password is why people don't download. What I have to ask you is WHY, pray tell, it takes so damn long? Do people manually check addresses or something? You have to /usr/lib/sendmail something to the person straightaway!
Might the people be merely requesting a new code to further their 30 day trial? Your software might have precautions against this, but on a Mac I know how easy it is to simply delete a preference file (ircle developers: please pretend you didn't read this).
You could have already thought of this, but that's just the first thing that popped into my mind. They don't download the software because they already have the software. They just need a new code.
1) Collect e-mail address then say "will mail username, passwd". If they had said it upfront and if it was immediate, it would be much more friendlier. :-)
2) Install spy-ware without public notice.
3) Infect registry(for M$), store/replace files in strange non-obvious places.
4) Difficult to uninstall.
5) Send info about user without permission.
6) Source not available.
...since I use Cowboy Neal's email address for all registration forms.
I do not like to give my e-mail address to companies, because I do not want spam. If I have to give my address to download software, I will likely not give it, or will give an incorrect address.
I just don't do this anymore. Much easier to get a version with all necessary serial numbers and whatever included from edonkey or usenet.
Don't require registration. Don't ask intrusive questions. It is not good for your company if the legit evaluation copy is harder to obtain than the warez version.
Do you believe in death after life?
registration sucks. I usually never mess with products that force me to give real information in order to test it out. From what I have found consumer products just generate some extra spam in your inbox, it's the damn coporate products(high dollar stuff) that gets really annoying. I really don't need some saleman e-mailing me every single day for a month just because I wanted to try out his java database driver!!
The simplest reason is the users have found something else in the mean time. It is particularly true if your product is mainstream (eg virus scanner, compression program, image viewer and the like).
Say, they are looking for jp2 viewer, they will go for shareware first, then evaluation ware. If nothing is found, go for evaluation ware that need registration. As long as they find something okay, they will stop searching. (Of course, if your software is unique, and some customers really need that, then they will wait.... Maybe more common in some sector of the research community. Not so in the commerical world.)
The better approach is to allow the user to download first. When they want to evaluate more advanced function of the software, pop up a window to lure them to register. If you really want to validate their email address in advance, please use automatic mail reply and ensure the avg time taken in within 5 mins rather than a few hours...
Why might you stop short of actually downloading the software?
Why do you think the people gave you their real email address in the first place?
I'd say most of the non-downloaders simply didn't give you their real email address.
I would never download a software if i have to register
... On commercial Software you have to pay for a fix. What a robbery ! I prefer to stay with Open Software, and try to contribute as much i can.
it. Indeed, i never do so, even if i payd for it. I'm receiving more that enough SPAM by now. I don't even register to read Newspapers online which sometimes are linked to slashdot articles. Thats to anoying. Why should i do such stupidity ??
Why passwords if in the end anything is crackable ???!!
...and usually commercial software have the most anying bugs. If some Open Software has a bug, most probably next week its fixed. Then i do apt-get install
Bye.
I often find that thirty days is simply not long enough to evaluate a product. The world of software development is frequently a turbulent one and priorities can shift from one day to the next.
A good example is something that happened recently. We had a memory leak and I was asked to figure it out. I said that a profiler would be an excellent tool to have so I downloaded evals of a couple of popular products. Before I could get to any evaluation we sorted the problem out using other means.
The tools we used we crude and even though the immediate problem was solved, I still wanted something more sophisticated. I moved on to other more pressing issues and when I finally had a quiet moment to install and play with the profilers, I realized my thirty days was gone.
I think sales departments assume that developers live in a very linear world. That we:
1.) Isolate the need for a product.
2.) Collect relevant information.
3.) Download demos
4.) Conduct a formal evaluation
5.) Based on the merits, make a decision.
This is not the world I live in.
The key is to keep the person's interest in your product. When they are visiting your site, they are all hyped up about this potentially great product and so they are eager to try it. But the problem is people have short attention spans. You need to catch them in the moment where they are most focused on working with your product.
You can't wait hours to send them a username and password, that whole system should be automated to send it to them immediately. Get them while they are interested in your service. I run a service [proboards.com] where someone signs up at our site, and we send them their login information. If we waited hours to send them their login info, they wouldn't be interested in what we have to offer and would have moved on to a competitor by then.
Often, the Pointy Haired Boss (PHB) has an urgent need for me to evaluate some Left-Handed Swivelhopper, so I sign up for the eval. By the time I'm ready to try it out, the urgent need has changed, I'm chasing Object-Oriented Dooverlackies.
I've often downloaded large files (>100MB even), then lost interest or found another way to solve my problem. Oops - I think I just admitted that I even change my own priorities! Oh well......
The largest reason for people to purchase anything is impulse. The novelity of the moment causes people to spend money they usually wouldn't spend.
When you do not give people instant gratification, they simply lose interest.
Better yet, let them use the software for 30 days, and after a week they'll never use the software again.
Evaluation periods just don't work.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
I just downloaded a trial-ware app the other day, and the company in question also wanted my email address, physical address, who I worked for, etc. All of the form items were required. I said, "bullshit," and did a Google search for the program - a minute later I was installing it.
So here's a question back: Why are you requiring people to register in the first place? Not knowing you or your business, I'd make two guesses:
- You're hoping to prevent your trialware being "pirated" or cracked, perhaps by keying each copy uniquely so you can identify the source of a cracked version.
- To collect information so you can market to me later, or sell my personal information to some other company.
Frankly, I think they're both stupid reasons. First, you can't prevent a determined person from cracking your software, or getting a cracked copy if he/she wants it. Second, if you'r eethical and up-front about using the information for marketing purposes then most people will just opt-out.Unless you've got a better reason, think hard about why you're making it more difficult for people to get your software - and why you weren't clueful enough to figure out people wouldn't register in the first place.
Lastly - hours?? That's one of the great things about online software distribution - you can have it right now. Unless I were convinced you were truly the only source in the world, I wouldn't even consider waiting that long.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
However, our method is the reverse of yours. You can download all the binaries whenever you want, any time, all the time. Transfer interrputed? Go ahead, download again. Downloaded it, but lost it? Download again. Got corrupted? Download again. These are the real things, not crippled evaluation versions.
What we do is liberally give out demo licenses via email, that expires after a short time. Provided you're not an asshole, you can renew your demo licenses.
Of course, the downside to this it could be cracked and warez'd out. I don't know the company stance and don't pretend to speak for it, but I don't care. Piracy is part of doing business in software, and the less you piss off your customers, IMHO, the better. So, while I don't like people pirating our software, I'm still against the recent stupid-ass (c'mon, you all know the words!) laws that seem to have festered recently in this area.
Perhaps this works better, I don't know why. Maybe it's psychological: people download the binary first and then feel they need to try it out to justify the time spent. Or something like that.
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
Most people fill out registrations with BS, I know I do. With the ones that require and email I use a temporary email account. Once I get the registration, I delete the email account. No spam thank you.
Then there's the software itself. Time limited trials are no good. Most people won't get too involved with the software if they know it's going to suddenly stop working one day. Either offer a slimmed down version with no time limit, or a slimmed down version with no time limit and a full version with a time limit so the user has a choice. You might be suprised at what most people are going to choose.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
A lot of people don't like giving their email addresses in order to get stuff. That is presumably not the problem you're having, though, because it's unlikely that people will put in a fake email address to which the information on how to get the software will be sent. If something asks for an email address to send information to, I either go away or I give a real one, because I don't get anything by giving a fake one. (I may give a fake one if it just wants an email address but I'm not expecting anything I want to be sent to it). Likewise, if I'm annoyed enough that something is asking for an email address gratuitously to not want to deal with the site, I'm not going to give an email address.
On the other hand, if I'm expecting information by email in response to a web request, I expect to get a response in a minute. It's not like sending me email is at all complicated. If it takes longer than that, I'm going to look for an alternative. If the site takes a few hours, I've probably already started using a different program, and I'm not interested in the one I found at first.
I will simply skip your software if I need to wait for an e-mail from you for a download key. There is no software I'm looking for on the web that I'm willing to waste my time for like that. I was looking for upload components for IIS the other day.. It's for a product I'm developing, and it must be redistributable royalty-free. I found a good component, downloaded it.. but was really turned off by the licensing options. Basically they said, "We only license this per-server. There are no site licenses, no redistributable licenses. We used to have site licenses, but once yours expires you need to buy a new license for every server." So, licensing is a huge turn-off for some eval software.
Basically, if I'm looking for a software component on the web it can't be too important. I don't exactly hunt around for full-scale accounting packages from companies I've never heard of. Chances are, your software just isn't important enough to justify making users jump through hoops to download it.
Why do you need my information anyway? I don't want you to call me.. frequently there is no checkbox where you can say, don't bother me at the office. I just don't see a reason why companies need a complete database of everyone who has tried their software.
Make it possible to use download accelerators like Gozilla. I have occasionally wanted to download a demo of something, only to find that because of the way the download page is structured, Gozilla can't kick in and take control of the download. When this happens, and if the file is large, I'll just give up rather than take the chance the download will be interrupted.
"This looks interesting, I'll just try their free evaluation version..."
"Ugh... they want my email address... Yeah, you send your spam to nobody@notme.com"
"Damn it, these spammy bastards mail you the access codes. [sigh] Okay, here's my real address..."
"A FEW MORE HOURS?!"
"Okay, Kazaa, where's the full version?"
1) If you need my email address, I don't need your software. (and if I do need your software, I'll enter support@microsoft.com)
2) Most utilities and apps are more trouble than they're worth. Particularly if we are talking about Windows software, it seems popular for 'programmers' to make a big deal out of their little program, writing all over the registry and putting files who knows where (which should not leave the program's own directory). Most of these save their registry settings "just in case" its reinstalled and don't fully uninstall themselves.
As far as Unix programs, chances are there's a better and free implimentation at Freshmeat. Make it GPL.
3) With Windows shareware/demoware in general, it's just a pain to deal with the cute little "register me" BS like popup windows, program start delays, time limits, "enter your registration number," etc. If I like the program, I'll register it, but annoying me every time I use the program just associates being annoyed with using that program.
Psychology 101 will show companies why that is a bad thing.
Just my $0.02
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
The time it takes to learn a new piece of software is an investment. I don't really feel like spending the time learning something, then spending MORE if I like it. Granted, the developer doesn't get anything if I invest that time... UNLESS: I invest the time and find I like this particular UNLIMITED SHAREWARE APPLICATION and send the $15 'recommended' fee the developer asked for. Which I have in many cases.
Better than 30day trial is nag-ware type thing. How many people registered ACDSee just to get rid of that? It's AWSOME software, that's why you do it.
(ramble off)
M@
Krispy Cream is people
Seriously though
1- Do ANYTHING that prevents me from downloading, installing, and using it immediately.
2- Require any sort of registration, especially when it requires a real email address. I don't want you to contact me, and if you don't want to contact me without approval, than you do not need my email address.
3- Limit your more useful and necessary features. Think about it.
An email containing a username and password is sent to the registrant a few hours after submission.
As so many others have mentionend, a "few hours" is a very long time. Perhaps not only because people have a short attention span, but because people, the potential costumers, are comparison shopping, and the delay meant that they went elsewere.
I don't know what software your company is making, but lets assume it is something for the desktop user, a piece of software that may have advanteges over the competition, but nevertheless may be easely substituted with something from a competing company. Eg. a small photo editing app.
Somewhere, a proud owner of a new digital camera, wants that kind of software; he goes searching on the web, looks at screenshoots, featurelists and prices, and decides that 3 products looks promising: two of the products are instantly downloaded and tried out, but your app, requires not only a long registration formular, but induces a surpricing two hour waiting period, in which your potential costumer, not only have tried your competitions apps, but may have actually bought them.
Think about going down "Main Street", shopping for a pair of shoes; In one shop, when asking for trying out a pair of shoes, the expedient hands you a two page formular, asking among other things, your phone number, age and job status.
After spending 20 minutes filling it out, you are then told to come back in a couple of hours.
You then go elsewhere.
Lets assume, that your software is somewhat more expensive, and not an "impulse" buy. Perhaps an unique app, that will help people design better, and faster "foo". Surely, professionals may be more patient. But no, that work dead afternoon, where you potential costumer is searching the web for tools that may make him more productive, may be followed up by 5 hectic days. So if you don't engage your potential costumer when he has time, you can loose an oppertunity.
Same thing with the trial period; if your software cost serious money, it probably requieres several hours to test. Most professionals have way too little time at their disposal, they may only have some short timeslots availeably during a week, for testing something new. 30 days may pass quickly, so bump the trial period to 60 days (like eg. IBM does).
In short, make your product as easely availably as possible.
Here's how it goes: I sit reading Slashdot, furrowing my brow feriously. A problem arises or my boss gets a fantastically [stupid] idea. I curse the gods of mediocrity that prevent me from rising any higher in the IT field, then I bust into monkey action... I need software to get a job done, the boss refuses to pay money for the correct solution, it's time to find some evaluation crap, rig something up, and let the boss worry about it when the license expires and my rigged solution isn't legal anymore.
1) I chart out my ideas, go over my available tools (not many, or I wouldn't be in this position), and figure out what parts I'll need from the outside.
2) I go to the outside. Software repositories, google, a few monkey message boards, the usual.
3) I download everything that looks close.
4) I install each program, one by one, and try to cram it into my preplanned solution.
5) I pick my favorites, modify my solution to their inevitable flaws (they're free = sub-perfect), and start on the three-crates-and-a-banana testing phase.
6)I'm a monkey, so I just bang the crates into each other until the banana falls down.
7) You e-mail the fake address I gave you back in step 3 because I'm angry and don't give a f--- about your information database.
8) Magically, the e-mail makes it to me anyway. If it doesn't get filtered, I delete it anyhow because I'm already at least in the testing stage.
Monkey power, baby. I'm who you're selling to. If you're going to make any money, it's because I tell the boss in a month that I refuse to let us use your tool because it's illegal. The only way I'm going to do that is if I don't hate you, and your product works.
Making me register makes me hate you. Worse, it gives your competitors a fat lead into my mindspace; and I'm lazy, so I'm not about to change my views when you come begging.
Monkey power.
. . . . . . . [awg] http://acidwriting.org
So, my recommendation: automate your process so that the user can download the software *immediately* (or at least, within a few minutes of completing the registration information). That should help.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
> If you're serious about trying out the software and would seriously consider purchasing it, giving them an e-mail so a representative can contact you for support makes sense.
No, it doesn't. If I'm looking for a solution, I might try a ton of demos until I find the right one. I don't want to be hounded by all of the ones I discounted as crap.
It's like shopping at JC Penney or Sears and the salespeople hound you EVERY 3 MINUTES. Thanks, but I already know how to shop and you just turned me off to your store.
Here's a shocking idea - How about if I need help I'll ask?
but I'm saying it again:
Nothing is more irritating than having to enter an email address, username and password. I can't count the number of times I've permanently chosen the competition to a product just because they insist on getting contact information that, despite their promises, ends up getting my precious email address on "penile enlargement spammer lists".
Symantec, Real and Mcaffee, amongst others, probably have at least two dozen or so bug@off.com email entries from me. Those three can take their crappy VBOX software that doesn't remove itself properly, doesn't document what changes it makes to the system, and stays stored and taking up place in a fairly obscure system folder and shove it.
Enough already, gimme 90 days, if I like it, I'll buy it. Leave me the hell alone otherwise and stop trying to get free marketing information from me.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
2. Registration. It's one thing to enter my name and email address, but I don't know if I want to create a login account to your site. Is it worth that extra step?
3. Download speed. If my location has a decent internet connection and I'm only getting 5-10 KB/sec, then large files are out of the question. If that download is at non-peak hours (and the site isn't Slashdotted) and the download speed is still unreasonable, I'll probably try other software sources first.
4. Free "developer" copies. Some people out there are going to call me a "Slashdot freebie-seeker", but free limited-implementation copies are to your company's advantage.
If "developers" (including sysadmins, DBAs, and less-technical users like artists) are able to use the software at home, they're more likely to recommend it. Depending on the software, your company "loses" money in the short term, but can make it up with big contracts (assuming that's a viable sales path). Also, making the product available at the user-level helps both the publisher and job-seekers. If your software is "in demand", unemployed IT workers (like myself) can download it, become famliar, and add that skill to the resume. On the other hand, if there are significant barriers to getting and using your software -- limited time trial, overly crippled features, or requiring the purchase of a license -- you're limiting your market. The law of supply and demand kicks in: the fewer developers there are, the more they cost an employer; raising the TCO of your product is not a strong marketing point.
There is a certain video editing application for Windows that has a feature I need (direct VOB editing), a feature that I haven't found in any other editing app, proprietary or otherwise, on any of the platforms I use (Mac OS X, Linux, Windows). I will not, however, even bother to evaluate it because the download instructions make it clear that to use it beyond the 30 days, I will have to email in a number calculated by the demo and get a registration number back (thus locking the registration to my current hardware).
Moral of the Story: Everything counts when you make a decision to download and run a demo, even terms of sale that don't apply unless you decide to buy.
Well, for one thing, the most important thing, is that its NOT FREE. You have to pay for it eventually.
Another thing, is why should I spend my time working with a buggy piece of software when there's probably a better, more stable, faster, FREER alternative somewhere?
Unless its really cool -- i.e., 3DOSX, FSV -- I don't spend time with evaluation-ware.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
They have a great paint program that's maybe one version behind photoshop, for a fraction of the price. They let you download a fully functional (for 60 days) evaluation version of their software.
I used their paint shop pro for the full 60 days for incidental work i had to do- and when the day came I really needed Photo software, I found the evaluation had expired.
I'm sure I could have found a hack, but by that time I had decided it was worth the money, so I went down to staples and bought the well-documented retail box version. Had they implented any "features" along the way that had interefered with a good, long eval period, I probably would have looked elsewhere.
SO here's jascs formula:
1. Make good software.
2. Make a fully featured but Generously time limited evaluation version available for No-Hassle download.
3. Wait and get the money from hooked & happy customers.
By the way, the boxed set was cheaper to buy at $80 (Staples) than to download from Jasc ($99) or order from jasc ($109)
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
If you have sold software before then you know how much it's going to sell. Providing a trial period is good, and those that need the software will try it and buy it.
If I'm looking for a piece of software that I don't know where to get, however, it usually means that I need it for some short term use now and not an hour from now, nor am I willing to give out my email for something I may never use again by someone I don't want to hear from.
You have set some fairly low jumps in the path of users who want to use your product. If you are aiming for customers who need your product and are willing to pay for it, then those jumps are not large. If you want everyone who sees your site to download your trialware, then you'd better eliminate those jumps.
You could do so by giving people a choice. Instead of saying, "If you want to use our software without paying, you must do steps one two and three." you could say something like, "We want to get our software into your hands. We know you'll find it useful. You can download the slightly crippled, time limited version right now and start using it immediately, or you can download the full version that's limited to a longer period of time if you register with your email address. The registration key will be sent immediately, and you should be able to use your software in under ten minutes (unless you use AOL - their mail sucks - it could take ten hours)."
The cold hard reality is that your software is going to be used without people paying for it. You can put jumps in the way that are annoying, but it's up to you to find the right balance of annoyance versus purchases. The more annoying the trialware is, the less likely I'll get it even if it's better than a less annoying piece of software (that may even cost more)
Clickbook is an example of this. I would like to have a product like clickbook, but their particular cripple scheme (last I tried it) was so absurdly annoying to me personally that I couldn't bring myself to pay for what appeared to be a decent product. It was like they wrapped it in a cardboard box and left it out on the sidwalk for me to use - only it was chained to the sidewalk and I had to sign away some info to bring it and the sidewalk home so I could try it out.
You want to have your product seen in the best light possible. That means some may walk away without paying. The balance is non-trivial, and it is a business decision - not one which should be made up by a discussion list like this one.
But it's your business - you get to gamble. Enjoy it while it lasts!
-Adam
The one thing that stops me from registering any shareware (apps or games) is the price. I don't wanna flame, but I thought the whole fscking point of cutting out the middleman was to lower the price of your software, while keeping a larger amount for yourself.
Case in point: Avernum. They've been going some good advertising for that game, and I'm really interested, but there's no way I'm going to pay 25 bucks for it when I see games RETAILING on store shelves for $10 to $20 all the time. And $40 for Opera? Yeesh. Blah blah I'm a cheap bastard yadda yadda, but I still wanna know where all that purchase price is going if there's no big monolithic publisher involved. Nobody's buying? Try lowering your price to increase volume. I know I'd pay five bucks for either of these programs right now if I could. But no, they have to play hard-to-get. Well fine, two can play at that game.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
A lot of people seem to be harping about registering to download something.
When I eval stuff for work (software developer), I don't mind at all registering my work info. It's the same way with conferences - I'm happy to give out my info.
Why? In general I find that companies trying to sell to other companies are not nearly as bad about spam as Fred's House 'O Cheap DVD's. Besides, it's my work mail account - who cares what happens to that.
So registration is not the problem as I see it. As others have said, you need to let the users download it whenever they like - look at just about any big chunck of enterprise software, they all have full versions you can DL. Then you need to send out a key, pronto! And make it easy. I've seen plenty of software where I downloaded it by then by the time I got the key I was doing something else and forgot the whole thing, or the key was such a PITA to get I just dropped the whole thing.
If you are worried about someone downloading it and making copies - fold up shop and shut down the company. You're going to be dissapointed if you expect anything less than everyone on earth having a fully enabled copy hours after the first regitsered user fires it up. Learn to live with that, then charge a fair price and people WILL pay you - remember, it's not even thier own money they are using so they are probably included to give you some! Plus, companies like nothing more than paying for support contracts even when they are not needed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Number 1: It's been said time and again, but registration. There are a million reasons why a company wants to have this, and I see these posts from people saying that I have no position to compain. I have EVERY reason to compain. I am a potential customer. And I don't want you to know anything about me until I buy your software. That's what I would prefer.
If I'm made to type in an e-mail address to download, I type in a bogus address. If I need to get a key or anything else from my e-mail, I've just been sent the message that the software company does'nt want my business. This has happened more then once, and I've gone somewhere else. If I like your software, and I give you my or my companies credit card number, you get to know who I am. Not before.
2. Full featured software. If I bother to download your evaulation, I expect to be able to use it. When I can't save my work, or find that an important feature is turned off, or I have some stupid 10 minut time limit, the software gets deleted.
3. Installation. I can tell right away how much I'd like or not like a peice of software by installation. Paste icons all over my desktop without asking? You've annoyed me. Put yourself in my startup, even though it's not needed? You're gone. Bundle yourself with spyware? You're gone.
4. Remind me, clearly, when the evaulation period is getting to the end. 'You have 5 days left in your evaulation period' when I start the program up. I can think of many times when I've found a peice of software I like, forget to purchase it, forget to get approval for the purchase. I find another way to get something done, and I'll just forget about it. If I were a more orginized person, I'd keep tabs of those things, but I'm not.
The Internet is generally stupid
Yes, there are many who enter garbage in all the fields. And yes, there are those who use the obvious throw-away email addresses. But we assume them to be not very serious prospective customers.
I can personally attest to over a dozen peices of software I've purchased after entering a bogus e-mail address.
I don't know what software you sell, but if I was shopping for an application you sell, and your marketing people wanted to know this 'golden' information why I went with a competitor, it's because you wanted to make me jump through hoops I did'nt want to jump through just to see if your stuff was any good.
The Internet is generally stupid
In your setup where I have to register and wait for a username/password to be e-mailed to me before I can download the software, the usual reason I never download it is that I had to wait for the username/password to be e-mailed to me. There's always some lag, from a few minutes to a day, and even if it's just a few minutes I can't sit there fetching and refetching my mail until the message arrives. So instead I go off to do other things until one of my hourly mail runs picks up the message and I check my inbox and notice it. The problem is I usually notice it in the middle of the workday, and I've got Yet Another Bug to fix right now, so I file the message in a folder to get to later. By the time I get free time, I've forgotten about it. I'll notice it when I do my daily check of things I have to deal with, but if it's not high-priority that I get that piece of software up and running (and eval software is rarely high priority) then I'll put it off again, and probably forget about it again. Usually by the time I get around to going back for the download, the username has expired and I can't get at the software. At which point I shrug and go on to one of the fifteen other jobs in my inbox.
If you want people to get the software, make it downloadable now. Mail them a key to activate it if you have to, but let them get the package when they're at your site and ready to get it.
Oh, and as for thinking that people who put in bogus e-mail addresses aren't good prospects, let me give you a clue: anybody who has any idea what they're doing these days never gives out their real e-mail address to anybody until they know who they're dealing with and are ready to buy from them. You're filing your most technically competent prospects, the ones who'll be making the recommendations to the CTOs about which products will actually do what they want, in the "bad prospect" file.
With a few hours delay, you lose a customer. If you competitor gets an eval that works in front of the customer first, and they are hurried to make a decision and buy now, you lose. Even if not that, the mere fact there is a delay in getting a simple username/password out by email gives a perception that technical support is going to suck really bad. Again, you lose.
Prime mission numero uno is to get rid of that few hours delay. Generate that username and password immediately, and mail it out right now. Accept no excuses from the programming people. If the product is any good, they can make a simple username/password mailback script.
A lot of other people have given good advice about making a better impression on the customer, but clearly if they have already given you their email, they were good to go this far. You lost them somewhere between giving the email address and mailing back the password. A few hours is a long time to wait and a big opportunity to lose a customer. Fix the long wait and don't make any excuses for it. And make sure much of the other advice is followed to help increase your responses. Make sure you a very clear about your policy on handling the email address. If you want to use it for mailing anything more than the username/password it is submitted for, given them the opportunity to OPT-IN to get announcements, separately for this product, and other products. And promise clearly on the web site to never give the email to any other business, not even partners.
And make sure your mail server hasn't been blacklisted for spam. if your company did any mass mailings of anything beyond an opt-IN mailing list, it probably did get blacklisted. See, doing that means you lose customers.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Did you go to the site?
Did you click the download link?
I was able to download several ports of this project with one click.
I loathe any evaluation type software, especially that which has some timer/trial date period before it forces you to register/buy the product. And I especially detest it when it embeds itself into the registry (specifically speaking of Windows platforms) and even after uninstalling, it still isn't completely wiped off my HD. It still shows but yet when I try to remove programs/uninstall, I get an error message ...
Some tips for aspiring developers to break free of the not-so-surprising (at least to me) pattern of timid experimenters and reluctant trial end users.
AZspot
An important point often missed by distributors of evaluation software is that it is NOT the same as FREE software, and should not be promoted as such. Tang is not orange juice. A free copy of crippleware or expireware is not the same as freeware.
I have no problem with people not giving away software for free, but I have a big problem with them pretending they are, just to get their foot in my door. In my mind it's in the same league as telemarketers who start out telling you they are conducting a survey. I have bought plenty of software after downloading the eval version, but NEVER after being tricked into downloading the eval copy in the guise of freeware.
Having to hunt around on the 'net for a crack! Seriously, if it's worth having, I will buy it, as long as doing so is easier than obtaining a cracked version...so make that part as painless as possible and we'll get along just fine.
Filling out those "forms" doesn't really bug me too much (except that bloody CNET wants us to fill out bloody forms now just to download freeware!), as I fill them all out pretty much the same:
Name: Homer Simpson
Address: 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington DC.
Country: Azerbajan
Zip: 90210
Year of birth: 1900
...and so on. You get the idea.
You're using her as bait, Master!
yush
Are you planning a visit to the planet Earth any time soon?
-- the most controversial site on the Web
You said "An email containing a username and password is sent to the registrant a few hours after submission". The combination of these is your problem in my book.
If I have to get sent an email with a download location, it annoys me. I want to download it then and there, not 6 hours later. Also, if I try to download it on a friday, so I can take it home to play with on the weekend, not having the URL appear for a few hours really annoys me.
I'd suggest ditching the emailing of the download url. If you must email something, email the registration key, and do it right away (like Real do for their server evaluations). That way, users can get the file then and there, and have their licence key arrive by email by the time the download has finished.
Oh, and warn them when they're entering their email address that they'll need to get sent a license key via email. It'll reduce the number of times Bill Gates (billg@microsoft.com) downloads your software if people realise they really do need you guys to have their email address, as opposed to just an email address!
This post will enter the public domain 70 years after my death, unless Disney buys another extension.
All in all, I've bought Opera, Forte Agent, Windows Commander, VMWare and Eudora.
They were hellishly expensive, but they beat the crap out of any other products that are free.
The ADS and pop-ups don't bother me, I bought them because they deserved it!
Whereas what bothers me about the totally free products: They don't quite seem to be mature, stable, reliable, fast.
I don't like the presumption of this article to force the opinion that Evaluation is bad. Please phrase the article to actually draw prositive responses as well.
Tut. Tut.
You'd think people in the business of writing software would be able to figure out how to generate a key and password and send it to you instantly.
First, 30 days is ways too short for a big company to efficiently evaluate a product.
So, the method:
1.go to yahoo
2.create an email account
3.note it on a post-it
4.go fill the form
5.download the software
6.receive your key on yahoo
7.trash the post-it
after the (short) evaluation period:
steps 1. 2. 3. 4. 6 and 7. from previous method
-> no download
CQFD
Actually, it's just that if I decide that I don't like the software, I'm likely not going to have the time to explain 'why' to somebody. If I'm not sigining up for a beta, I expect the useage of eval software to be utterly anonymous; I'm the one evaluating it, if I decide not to use it, I'm the one who should decide if it's worth my time to tell you guys. You don't need to contact me, you don't need to know I tried your stuff.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Whenever I go to the point of registering as if I were planning on buying or trying a piece of software and yet I don't actually carry through it means that the vendor didn't have all the information I needed available on the website. Quite often I'll register with a fake email address to check and see what the pricing schemes look like, what it will cost to ship a product, or just to see if I can glean any extra information from the website after registering.
The best way to accelerate a windows box is at 9.8 meters per second square.
Okay, okay, okay. We all know that registration and giving out your goddamn email address turns all of you
</rant>
BTW, if you expect users to wait for a login to arrive in their email, then you shouldn't be surprised that many of them don't bother with the download. And, on top of that, you shouldn't be surprised to discover that, of those who do download the software, a good portion will not bother installing it anyway (it's free! I'll download it! Done. Aw fuckit).
As an 'about to give up' shareware programmer I'd say forget about the free downloads. Make 'em pay up front and you'll know that they'll install it. Offer them an MONEY BACK GUARENTEE and have one of 'dem statistical accountancy types figure out how much will actually be reclaimed.
What really burns my ass, as a shareware programmer (who also does open source linux kernel programming BTW), is the fucking attitude of these cheap bastard /. types who send me email, critisize my placement of a button in a dialog box, demand a never ending stream of features and then bitch about the fact that it's shareware. I'd be a fucking millionaire if I had a dollar for every time I heard one of these cheap bastards say, "add this feature and I'll register your software, otherwise forget it". This is why your business model will never work. When I started the business as shareware, I and other shareware programmers, thought we were being altruistic by offering the ability to try before you buy (I started doing this in the late 80's under Windoze 3.1).
Well, good luck, and a big FUCK YOU to all the cheap bastards.
A little late in the process, but MOD ME UP ya bunch of cheap bastards.
:wq
How can I sell more products? Why are my customers fleeing before they ever use my product? Can you please get your enormous crowd of readers to tell me how I can sell more products to them?
I wonder what the responses to this question would be worth to a marketing department...
Badgers? Badgers! We don't need no stinkin' Badgers!
> username and password is sent to the registrant a few hours after submission
If I have an immediate need for software, I'm not going to wait a few hours. I'll have found your competitor's software by that time. If it's not available now, it's not available. Get real!
For business, the reasons are numerous. First, we can only buy from certain vendors easily. I would really like to get Jasc's Image Robot [I hope this isn't accidentally your company] but our vendor doesn't stock it so I'll do without until I can complain in an I-told-you-so manner that I love so much ... oops ... too much information, eh?
Second, I often find that I can't demonstrate the workflow I'm trying to prove with the demo. Sometimes this is a problem with crippleware and sometimes with it being hard to implement. Image Robot, for instance, looks like it'll do what I need but I haven't bothered to implement a full flow because it would be hard.
Third and so on--things other people have already mentioned. Changing priorities and the like, loss of interest, loss of job, etc.
As for software for personal use:
First, the off-the-cuff cost-benefit analysis is very important. Often I'll want a piece of software for just one little thing so even $30 might be too high for that purpose. Similarly I may only need it once.
Second, time and interest change. I may have enough time to download and install some demo, but I might not ever get back to checking it. If I go to run it and it's expired, oh well. Sometimes I just lose interest too.
I've got another specific example--Ultralingua Collegiate Dictionary I want an electronic dictionary to give me all the features I already have in American Heritage but will run on OSX [there, I let the cat out of the bag ... I'm a Mac guy.] I already own American Heritage and really love the Word Hunter [definition searching utility] feature. Ultralingua, while slick, fast, and OSX-aware doesn't do that so I'm just not interested. I'll wait for Houghton Mifflin to pop out another version and buy that. So ... I downloaded the demo and didn't buy the product.
Finally, and in both personal and business, software with bugs will stop me from buying. It's very odd ... if you are kind enough to allow people to try-before-buying, they'll be critical of crashes and bugs that they'd just begrudgingly work around if they just bought the stupid software without trying it. The trick is that you never release a beta as a demo. Betas are betas and should be full-blown and come with a big benefit to the user for being your tester. Demos are bug-free and designed to say that you're a competent company. Nobody likes testing software for nothing ... just ask any Windows user ;-) [ok, ok ... or Mac user or Palm user or anything user]
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
-m
Try this, it works beautifully:
Cashier: ...And can I have your last name please?
You: No.
See how easy that is? Even if you need to pay with a check or card, if you don't want them to put your name in their database, they'll respect that.
I don't know if the article subject's software is consumer, professional, complex, etc but 30 days sounds like just barely long enough for even many consumer evaluation scenarios, and not nearly long enough for significant business evaluation.
Unless software evaluation is part of both your job description and part of your performance review process, it is dead last on the list of things to do.
Which means in my typical week I might be able to fit in maybe 4 hours of evaluation time. In 30 calendar days that's maybe the equivilent of about 10 serious hours looking at something. It could be more or less depending on need and time, but it doesn't feel like very much, especially if the package is very complex and requires either a lot of learning, configuration, long run time or extensive usage to properly evaluate it. And this isn't even counting actually testing the thing in some formal manner.
90 days sounds much, much more realistic and I would hope that with proper contacts that an open-ended evaluation might be possible as well.
Think for example of an SNMP package -- configuration and info gathering could take a long time. Analysis of what it does is time-based -- you need to run the thing for a month to gather enough data to see if the package is telling you anything meaningful. This whole process could take 2 months, longer if the evaluation and usage takes multiple people.
Just this past week, we replaced our "freeware" product with a 30-day demo. The key reason for this decision is that the 30-day demo comes with full support. The freeware version did not come with full support in case something in the software blew up during normal usage. This was a blessing for the technicians who provided the support because too much time was being spent on the phone with the "freeloaders" in giving them the support which was not granted to them.
(1) Most trial packages will install cleanly, but uninstall is often a nightmare. This is a bigger issue with Windows that other operating systems, but uninstalls are never to be taken lightly.
(2) The stability of Windows is inversely proportional to the number of packages installed. Uninstalling doesn't help the stability issue.
(3) Some of the setup procedures prompt for way too much personal contact information. The last thing I want is to get plugged into someone's perpetual telemarketing machine. I have seen this happen often enough to the point where I don't bother with trial versions of software.
(4) I have seen too many examples of trial versions that had undocumented limitations in a addition to the 30-day limit.
(5) Since you only get 30 days, it makes sense to wait until you actually have time to evaluate the package. If I install the software and then get busy with other things, the 30 days runs out, and I still get stuck with the problems as noted in (1) and (2) above.
(6) For any given application, I look for open source software first. I can evaluate indefinitely. If it's lousy I throw it away. If it works I keep it running. Either way, I pay nothing and there are no annoying telemarketing salesmen to deal with!
What are the conditions under which the evaluation software is released, and when do you discover what they are?
Frequently I find that I get all to way to reading the license before I decide not to download something. Sometimes it's because the demo seems too crippled to be useful. Sometimes it's because the evaluation time is too short. I don't spend my days evaluating your software. A 30 day evaluation license can easily turn into a few hours to evaluate something. And it depends on what the software is. Some software is only useful at certain times.
If the software won't let me save files, then it must be something that I can thoroughly evaluate in one session. If it features reports, then it had better be able to generate the reports (nothing wrong with an "Evaluation Use Only" in large skeletal letters being embedded in the background, though).
Too often the demo-ware is so crippled that it's useless for all purposes. I frequently won't even install it from CDs that came with my system. Not because I know that it's bad, but because such a large percentage of the demoware that I've installed has been so much worse than useless. But I do still go looking.
Another thing that can happen is that the price is hidden until the very last minute. That can easily cause me to just abandon processing, but I can easily imagine someone who felt angrier filling in bogus information. (Note I said angrier. I am always at least irritated at companies that make you jump through hoops to find out what their prices are.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I'm one of those who registers for evaluation downloads fairly regularly, but never get the software. Why? Because of our company's firewall policies, that's why. No FTP. If you want me to download your stuff after I register, make sure I have a choice of both FTP and HTTP downloads. If you're not bright enough to do that much, then your software probably isn't too good and I won't bemoan the fact that I didn't get to try it out.
The funniest thing, is I can't even download a new version of our firewall software because their default settings block me out of their FTP site. Morons.
I'm frequently asked to look at and evaluate various pieces of software. Usually, this is in preparation for organization-wide deployment and support.
However, <em>that's not my job</em>. It's a tiny little part of it. The server's broken, a user needs to have his machine fixed, and I need to evaluate your software. Guess which one goes to the bottom of my priority list.
When I actually have time to do evaluations, I work on two levels at once. I'm busy reading trade magazines, web sites, and usenet to <em>find</em> products, and as soon as I find one, I download it. I usually get an hour or two at a time to do this before something else grabs my attention, so unless your key arrives within 5 minutes, I've found another product to download and test. I don't get back to the evals for days at a time. If your registration process made me wait for more than a few minutes, I figure that I can wait a while to test the product, so it could be a few weeks before I finish gathering all of your competitors' products to testing and deploying yours.
If one of your fucking salesweasels has the nerve to call me the next day, you go to the bottom of the list. I'll happily tell the weasels that by making me wait for a registration key, they made me put off testing your product for a few weeks. If you call again, I mention that we include "harassing sales calls" in the "Service and Support" part of the evaluation, and every sales call reduces that company's score.
Test time. I have to dig through my email to find the key. Great. It's a 30 day key, and I downloaded your stuff 25 days ago. It'd better wow me in the next hour, since I probably won't have time for another look before the key expires. If I've heard so much as a peep from your sales people (i.e. the usual every-other-day "Didja try it yet? Do you like it? Huh? Huh?" bit), I'm not going to call and ask for a new key. I'm going to give it a zero for functionality ("Can't test it. Bad key.")and give your company a zero for service and support (for annoying me) and encourage my boss to go with a less annoying competitor.
Want to impress me? Do the following:
-Don't make me wait for a key
-If you must make me wait, give me a reasonably long time to test. Go ahead and lock the product to my domain or a small number of users if you want. Use the wait time to give me a custom demo copy.
-In your registration form, provide a "have one of your sales associates give me a call" checkbox, and <em>honor it</em>.
-Send follow-up literature by mail, and <em>make it useful</em>. I have half an hour to read it (well, I'll go back and read all of it if you're one of our top choices, but until then...). Glossy pictures of somebody else's server room and more than one buzzword per sentence won't impress me. Specs, limitations, and pricing will. Understand that in some organizations, the managers actually listen to the techies.
-Ask when we plan on deploying. If the answer is 6+ months, don't call me next week asking what I thought of your product. Call me in 3 months and ask if I had any problems.
Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.
This might be a redundant post, but I don't think the point can be made clearly enough:
As an developer and an IT professional who evaluates plenty of software each year for purchase, my biggest turn-off is companies that force you to register your name, company info, email address, and get a username/password etc simply to download some lime-limited evaluation copy.
I very much dislike giving out personal information. I also dislike having to spend the time to fill out forms that violate my privacy. Finally, I dislike being burdened with YET ANOTHER username/password pair that I will never remember.
I never give accurate information on these forms, and the email address I use is always a one-off throw-away account.
Unless the product is obviously compelling, I don't bother with it if there is some awful registration process like the above. Even if the product is obviously compelling, I will check out all the competitors that don't have an annoying registration evaluation process first.
I have even recommended products for purchase (that were for our purposes equally good) based on whether or not they had an annoyed registration process for the eval software.
-OT
I can't speak for others, but this is probably why I didn't download your software:
1. User comes to IS (me) and asks for software that does whatever. They ususally need it yesterday.
2. I search Google, Dave Central maybe, relevant newsgroups, talk to peers, look at reviews if they are available.
3. I register for eval copies of software (maybe yours) and download what I can.
4. I look them over with users, decide one is good enough, purchase a copy of software, go on to other tasks.
5. I get email from your company with user/pass for evaluation.
Yes, when it is non-mission-critical stuff, decisions may be made that quickly.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
Many have mentioned the major, obvious problem with demoware. If you can find a fix for them, you will be miles ahead of the competition, namely:
30 days is not enough time (I do use my computer for other things, you know).
Uninstall is a nightmare. It should be seamless and leave no traces at all. No, not even a file that says I d/l'ed a demo once. If I feel I have to reinstall to evaluate 30 more days, you shouldn't stop me.
Give me a save-disabled demo and I will give you an install-disabled customer. Nice try, see ya later.
One problem for me, that I haven't seen mentioned yet, is what do you do with the files you created? A lot of SW appropriate for a demo is complicated and if it has any power at all, hopefully you will create something useful with it. Then what?
I would like it if after the demo expired, I could still somehow use a file I created. Why would I use "real" data to generate a file that can't be opened ever again?
Now, you may think that's stupid, that you have no intention of allowing users to use your demo product to create a file that can be viewed (but not modified) or exported after the demo expires.
But, I can assure you that an orphaned file demo guarantees I won't even attempt to explore your product's features. It may be the greatest thing around, but I'm never going deep enough to find out, and you will have lost a sale to a customer who needs your stuff but doesn't know it.
I think it's also important to realise what the process involves. You have me interested enough to jump through a few hoops. Anybody in sales & marketing will tell you that it's very expensive to get there with a customer.
Now (after I agree to a trial), I have a real-world experience with your product and your company. What happens next determines whether the sale goes through or you have to spend the major portion of your marketing budget to get to the same place with another customer. So work with me on this, okay?
If the bean counters balk at that much power in your demos, you should consider offering a working previous version to evaluators, or offer a "lite" version. If I can use it, I will upgrade sooner or later, and your installed base grows. Last time I checked, that's the secret to getting market dominance.
"When I eval stuff for work (software developer), I don't mind at all registering my work info. It's the same way with conferences - I'm happy to give out my info."
Good point, I wouldn't mind giving out your work info either. So, what was that e-mail addess?
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
I'm looking at CAD and milling software right now. I've looked at a variety of software and have settled on what CAD software I want but I'm still uncertain about the milling software. The reason has everything to do with the nature of what I've downloaded so far.
Rhino's CAD software comes fully functional for 25 saves. That is, it does absolutely everything the purchased software does but you're limited to 25 saves. You can check out how every function works, find the bugs and see if there's a reasonable work around and in general, have an excellent idea of whether or not the software does what you need it to do. Rhino's a definite buy for me.
Contrast that to the milling software. Now I have my sample Rhino file and I want to feed it to the milling software. How easy is it to do that, how good is the cnc code coming out the other end? I don't know. Every single piece of milling demo software I've found so far either turns out to be a quicktime movie showing me how they intend it to be used or the software is limited to using some demo files they've provided. That's worth squat as a demo. It doesn't tell me if the software will work the way I want it to work or if there are show stopper bugs in the feature sets I'm likely to use. I don't for a second doubt that the demo's will be gee-whiz, whiz-bang, ain't-it-cool. But what I really want to know is will it really work?
I'm not too eager to lay out $500-1000 for software that the developer isn't comfortable letting me test-drive at 90 mph on 45 mph curves.
So want a successful demo program? Copy Rhino's.
Why oh why do I need to register with anyone to EVALUATE software? When I am evaluating software, I am usually evaluating between 5 and 10 software packages at a time. I end up only purchasing ONE. Why do the other 9 companies need to have my info? If I didn't want their product, why would I want them contacting me in the future?
By the way, hours in internet time is like decades in real time. Your e-mail responses should go out within 2 minutes.
-ted
"An email containing a username and password is sent to the registrant a few hours after submission" [emphasis added]
Unless what you're selling is the one and only tool on the market which does the job it does, in "a few hours" I've found three other products which do what your thing does and I'm busily evaluating them instead. And one of them did the job I need it to. And I've forgotten you even exist.
Unless you really do have a stranglehold on a niche, go have a look around at how your competition deal with evaluation downloads. If some of them are making it even one step eaiser to test their junk, you can bet you're losing sales to them.
I bet the reason you failed math is that you couldn't tell the difference between math and logic. 8)
Virg
Anyone out there have a hack for sendmail that will simply blackhole mail bound for a given address? Just drop the connection when the offending RCPT command is received?
/dev/null as the pathname of the mailbox...
If you want to key on sender address or domain, the "access" database can contain a REJECT or DISCARD entry. (With DISCARD, it will seem to be accepted but get silently discarded.)
To blackhole all inbound email to a given address, the simplest solution is simply to alias that address to "/dev/null". If it starts with a "/", sendmail will use the *file* mailer, which will append the message to the file like it does with a normal Unix mailbox. Of course, with
Deven
"Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay
Yes it is annoying, even when I worked for em a year or so. But in their defense I will say that they have never abused their database. They tell you they collect it to send out the monthly flyer and that is all they ever do with it.
Too many companies think, well this guy wandered by my website/visited my store, etc. and was stupid enough to leave contact info so we now have permission to spam him silly for eternity. And screw honoring requests to stop.
Democrat delenda est
Good! Listen up, then, and you'll learn something here.
1.) Personal Data: As was said so eloquently above, I neither know nor trust you. I don't have any real reason to believe you'll keep my email address private, even if you say you will. If your software requires a key code to run, and I have to give you an address to get it, I'll move on to the next package. If and when I decide to buy it, I'll give you my information.
2.) Time: If you think the time necessary to fill out the form is the important part, you're wrong. First is trust (see #1 above), and second is response time. If for some reason I assume your product is worth downloading, but I can't make it run immediately to see if it suits, I'll find another that will. I rarely have time to put any package to an exhaustive test period, and mostly I get these sorts of programs because I need a specific problem solved in short order. If your package can't demonstrate its utility in this regard within my time frame, I'm off to the next.
3.) Profitability: I don't have time to care if you think licensing is the only way to make money. If you think that way, then don't do eval packages. I care only that your software can (or cannot) solve the problem for which I sought it out. That's the real world. If your package does what I need, and does it well enough that it's better than the alternatives, you'll get a check. If it's not around in a year, then that's your software's problem. If you think that fully functional shareware can't make money, I point out that PKWare built a business on it. I like it, I use it, so I bought it. I didn't have to pay, since the shareware version is fully functional and never expires, but since it's better than the alternatives and does what I need it to do, they got a check.
Do the same and you'll get paid. Welcome to the real world.
Virg
On a more on-topic note, the evaluation keys I ordered for WinGate yesterday at 8pm (it's a little after noon on the next day now) just now arrived. Jerks. The choice between reviving an old Linux box running ipchains and buying WinGate just got a lot easier.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
What is it? And if this is the US government, simply make an FOIA request of the agency producing it for the software. You won't give up nearly as much information as you're describing in that case.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.