I've moaned before about software protection and how, in my experience, all it serves to do is prevent legitimate users from actually using the software they've paid for. Here's another real world example of just that.
Seaward make portable appliance testers (PAT) and to go with them a rather poor yet very expensive piece of software called Patguard Elite 2. This uses an online challenge/response activation system which locks the software to specific PC hardware.
There's seemingly no way to de-activate the software from a computer that's working, and should your computer's hard disk crash (as happened today) the only option is to call Seaward technical support.
When you can eventually get through to Seaward's technical support (which seems to be only one person) it will take them two working days to sort this out.
That's right.... two days.
I'm not trying to have a pop at the under staffed tech support department, this isn't their fault.
As ever, I know this software is being distributed illegally on warez sites, so the copy protection hasn't stopped people copying the software. It has prevented me from doing the job I needed to do today, wasted a lot of my time and made me very angry.
Well done Seaward.
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