Warez, why ?
-
Daniel Turini wrote: Yeah, yeah... If it's a dongle, then that is understandable. Most dongles suck big-time.. .they have problems with printers, other dongles, etc. And they can get lost easily. I wouldn't buy a program that required a dongle. "Time spent with cats is never wasted." - Colette
But there's a difference between buying software, and asking for a free demo -- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
-
It's all about convenience. Like some of you out there, I'm not that good at alot of things but am quite good at a select few. I tend to buy software that I know I'm going to use alot, and I tend to pirate software that I'm interested in, but don't want to invest $500 on the "chance" that I will make use of it to earn that money back. With that said, piracy is still wrong. When i get a free piece of software from a roomie I determine whether its something that I want and if it is somthing that I will use frequently. If it is, which RARELY happens, I install it to confirm my suspicions and I but it days or weeks later. If it's a piece of software that will not become part of my permanent library, I will pirate it. I figure that my money should only be spent on software that I will use alot. I'm new here, pardon the n00bing
Joe Herbert wrote: If it's a piece of software that will not become part of my permanent library, I will pirate it. That's why people don't make more of those useful tools that will be used once in a year, e.g., disk migration tools, really good disk defragmenters, and so... My latest articles: XOR tricks for RAID data protection Win32 process suspend/resume tool
-
João Vaz post below made me thinking. How stupid is a programmer that use warez: 1. He could do the software by himself 2. He live by selling software 3. Most big software producers have a kind of partnership where they give programmers all their software for free or for almost free (and yes, MSDN Universal is almost free if you consider what you get) 4. He could use a GPL or BSD alternative So, why some programmers still use warez? My latest articles: XOR tricks for RAID data protection Win32 process suspend/resume tool
I agree in general, there is no reason to pirate software. But I think even otherwise "honest" people might pirate in a few cases: 1. You want to try out software before buying it. Not all software can be tried using an evaluation license. 2. If you have several machines and several licenses, it is easy to forget how many licenses you really need, and you may end up installing on too many machines. Making eval versions for more software, or allowing refunds on software purchases within a specified amount of time will alleivate 1. Making it easier to track licenses would help number 2. The rest of the people who still pirate can then be prosecuted. :-D "Time spent with cats is never wasted." - Colette
-
It's a hardware lock, normally plugged on USB or paralel port, for using in your software. Your software only runs with it. There's even a version of it (the one I use), which comes with a embedded clock for time-limited licenses. http://www.ealaddin.com/hasp/default.asp?cf=tl[^] My latest articles: XOR tricks for RAID data protection Win32 process suspend/resume tool
Discreet (aka Kinetix) tried that with 3D Studio Max R3. Them little blue suckers are a pain in the butt. Also, it's still easy to get around - a patch always being available. Crackers don't care about the hardware, they just bypass it by altering the EXE. I don't know the specs to this HASP stuff yet, but the point is there will always be a way to get around any scheme. However, I'm also willing to bet a good scheme could help decrease the amount of pirated copies. AFAIK (haven't upgraded yet) they stopped doing this hardware lock type crap because it only became cumbersome for the legitimate users. Jeremy Falcon Imputek "Oh no there was a knife in that kitchen drawer and I cut myself - please remove the kitchen." - David Wulff
-
But there's a difference between buying software, and asking for a free demo -- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
That is true. I guess it was unclear whether the dongle would be required just for the eval, or for the production version, too. If it's the latter, then I can understand why the bank wouldn't want to buy it. There are many other ways of protecting your software.. such as license servers, software keys, etc. Even the dreaded "activation" that Microsoft uses is much better than a dongle. (Just because a dongle is hardware doesn't make it unhackable.. so that's not an excuse.) "Time spent with cats is never wasted." - Colette
-
Daniel Turini wrote: Yeah, yeah... If it's a dongle, then that is understandable. Most dongles suck big-time.. .they have problems with printers, other dongles, etc. And they can get lost easily. I wouldn't buy a program that required a dongle. "Time spent with cats is never wasted." - Colette
Navin wrote: If it's a dongle, then that is understandable. Most dongles suck big-time.. .they have problems with printers, other dongles, etc. And they can get lost easily. I wouldn't buy a program that required a dongle. It was a free demo of the application. And more, it is a enterprise class software, that runs unnatended and isolated on a server, so you won't have problems with printers, other dongles, etc. And won't be lost. If you remove the dongle from the machine, the 24x7 operation will stop immediately. IMHO, their intention was clearly using my software illegaly. They asked the demo stating that they needed a time-limited version, but full-functioning one. :suss: My latest articles: XOR tricks for RAID data protection Win32 process suspend/resume tool
-
João Vaz post below made me thinking. How stupid is a programmer that use warez: 1. He could do the software by himself 2. He live by selling software 3. Most big software producers have a kind of partnership where they give programmers all their software for free or for almost free (and yes, MSDN Universal is almost free if you consider what you get) 4. He could use a GPL or BSD alternative So, why some programmers still use warez? My latest articles: XOR tricks for RAID data protection Win32 process suspend/resume tool
Warez have one application , to learn the product when the product is too damn expensive , like Autocad 2002 or 3D MAX ... For instance in Design courses they promote a lot of works on this 2 softwares , the students don't have the money to buy them , so they use it illegaly to perform their duties. Many times the schools don't have the right means neither the resources to let a bunch of students work on their projects classes. Sad but true. Another case was when was lokking for a job , I was unemployed , didn't have the money , already finnished my bachelor's degree , and didn't have right to student's discounts , so I pirated Visual Studio to learn the VB (shame on me ) language , when finnaly I was employed I and had the money I bought Visual C++ Professional Edition (I was sick of VB) , the same with a great program Partition Magic , and the same with Windows 2000 ... Now even I have uninstalled Office from my Computer because it was a pirated version , and now I use free linux word processors ... My friends from Computer area , ALL of them joke with me , because I'm too damn honest and they don't buy ANY legal software at all, they have more important things to pay , like their houses and cars . In opposition now I must use the Cash Advance from the bank, because in the 2nd time in 5 months I forgot to count with 2 checks that I passed some months ago, now if I only didn't bought Windows 2000 and VS.NET I had money to pay all my expenses and don't ask for a small loan from the bank ... this is why I tend each day that passes to use linux , I have to many expenses and Microsoft world at this time is too expensive to me (if you recall I pay my wife studies , she don't work) ... In the end I understand the warez concept , but only on a domestic scale , on on a large scale like this , I'm totally against. Just my $0,02 :) Cheers,Joao Vaz And if your dream is to care for your family, to put food on the table, to provide them with an education and a good home, then maybe suffering through an endless, pointless, boring job will seem to have purpose. And you will realize how even a rock can change the world, simply by remaining obstinately stationary.-Shog9
-
I agree in general, there is no reason to pirate software. But I think even otherwise "honest" people might pirate in a few cases: 1. You want to try out software before buying it. Not all software can be tried using an evaluation license. 2. If you have several machines and several licenses, it is easy to forget how many licenses you really need, and you may end up installing on too many machines. Making eval versions for more software, or allowing refunds on software purchases within a specified amount of time will alleivate 1. Making it easier to track licenses would help number 2. The rest of the people who still pirate can then be prosecuted. :-D "Time spent with cats is never wasted." - Colette
Navin wrote: 1. You want to try out software before buying it. Not all software can be tried using an evaluation license. I wouldn't even consider buying a software under this condition. They are trying to hide something from me, I don't like it. I feel the same about those softwares that have the "Save" menu disabled. It's plain stupid. Let your user LOVE your software, not HATE! Navin wrote: 2. If you have several machines and several licenses, it is easy to forget how many licenses you really need, and you may end up installing on too many machines. This is a excusable one for piracy. No sane person would send to jail a customer! My latest articles: XOR tricks for RAID data protection Win32 process suspend/resume tool
-
Warez have one application , to learn the product when the product is too damn expensive , like Autocad 2002 or 3D MAX ... For instance in Design courses they promote a lot of works on this 2 softwares , the students don't have the money to buy them , so they use it illegaly to perform their duties. Many times the schools don't have the right means neither the resources to let a bunch of students work on their projects classes. Sad but true. Another case was when was lokking for a job , I was unemployed , didn't have the money , already finnished my bachelor's degree , and didn't have right to student's discounts , so I pirated Visual Studio to learn the VB (shame on me ) language , when finnaly I was employed I and had the money I bought Visual C++ Professional Edition (I was sick of VB) , the same with a great program Partition Magic , and the same with Windows 2000 ... Now even I have uninstalled Office from my Computer because it was a pirated version , and now I use free linux word processors ... My friends from Computer area , ALL of them joke with me , because I'm too damn honest and they don't buy ANY legal software at all, they have more important things to pay , like their houses and cars . In opposition now I must use the Cash Advance from the bank, because in the 2nd time in 5 months I forgot to count with 2 checks that I passed some months ago, now if I only didn't bought Windows 2000 and VS.NET I had money to pay all my expenses and don't ask for a small loan from the bank ... this is why I tend each day that passes to use linux , I have to many expenses and Microsoft world at this time is too expensive to me (if you recall I pay my wife studies , she don't work) ... In the end I understand the warez concept , but only on a domestic scale , on on a large scale like this , I'm totally against. Just my $0,02 :) Cheers,Joao Vaz And if your dream is to care for your family, to put food on the table, to provide them with an education and a good home, then maybe suffering through an endless, pointless, boring job will seem to have purpose. And you will realize how even a rock can change the world, simply by remaining obstinately stationary.-Shog9
Joao Vaz wrote: Warez have one application , to learn the product when the product is too damn expensive , like Autocad 2002 or 3D MAX ... Damn, you are right. Living in a third world country is unfair, sometimes. In old college days I was broke and buying software was so expensive... After all, I was making no money. I confess, I used a pirate Turbo C and MS-DOS, but as soon as I earned some money as a junior programmer, I bought their licenses. It was almost the same prices as buying the books, and (good days), they went with a printed manual! Now I don't even know where the disks are anymore... :(( My latest articles: XOR tricks for RAID data protection Win32 process suspend/resume tool
-
Discreet (aka Kinetix) tried that with 3D Studio Max R3. Them little blue suckers are a pain in the butt. Also, it's still easy to get around - a patch always being available. Crackers don't care about the hardware, they just bypass it by altering the EXE. I don't know the specs to this HASP stuff yet, but the point is there will always be a way to get around any scheme. However, I'm also willing to bet a good scheme could help decrease the amount of pirated copies. AFAIK (haven't upgraded yet) they stopped doing this hardware lock type crap because it only became cumbersome for the legitimate users. Jeremy Falcon Imputek "Oh no there was a knife in that kitchen drawer and I cut myself - please remove the kitchen." - David Wulff
Jeremy Falcon wrote: Discreet (aka Kinetix) tried that with 3D Studio Max R3. Them little blue suckers are a pain in the butt. Also, it's still easy to get around - a patch always being available. Crackers don't care about the hardware, they just bypass it by altering the EXE. Oh, not with HASP (I'm not associated in any way with Aladdin :) ). Believe me, I know plenty of ASM and really know how to crack an application, though I don't do it for moral reasons. Before using the HASP, I tried to break it, and I couldn't. Maybe if I put more effort in it, I could, but, then, it's cheaper buying my software. The only one weakness of HASP is the device driver: some ppl created a HASP emulator (for the version 3, I'm using version 4) that works and unprotect all the HASP software. My latest articles: XOR tricks for RAID data protection Win32 process suspend/resume tool
-
Joao Vaz wrote: Warez have one application , to learn the product when the product is too damn expensive , like Autocad 2002 or 3D MAX ... Damn, you are right. Living in a third world country is unfair, sometimes. In old college days I was broke and buying software was so expensive... After all, I was making no money. I confess, I used a pirate Turbo C and MS-DOS, but as soon as I earned some money as a junior programmer, I bought their licenses. It was almost the same prices as buying the books, and (good days), they went with a printed manual! Now I don't even know where the disks are anymore... :(( My latest articles: XOR tricks for RAID data protection Win32 process suspend/resume tool
Daniel Turini wrote: Living in a third world country is unfair, sometimes. Yeap, It can be pretty unfair sometimes ... it's a pitty but that's the reality. Daniel Turini wrote: After all, I was making no money. I confess, I used a pirate Turbo C and MS-DOS, but as soon as I earned some money as a junior programmer, I bought their licenses. It's my attitude also. :-) Daniel Turini wrote: It was almost the same prices as buying the books, and (good days), they went with a printed manual! Good old days of cheap prices ... they don't comeback ... :-( Daniel Turini wrote: Now I don't even know where the disks are anymore... Yeap, I known what you mean , it's part of our beloved computer history and evolution. Sometimes I miss those days ... good old funny days ... fighting for freeing the 640 kb of memory to play the old games on the floppy disks , the expanded and extended memory , configuring autoexec.bat and config.sys ... , all day long on the dos prompt, sniff :-( Cheers,Joao Vaz And if your dream is to care for your family, to put food on the table, to provide them with an education and a good home, then maybe suffering through an endless, pointless, boring job will seem to have purpose. And you will realize how even a rock can change the world, simply by remaining obstinately stationary.-Shog9
-
Daniel Turini wrote: Living in a third world country is unfair, sometimes. Yeap, It can be pretty unfair sometimes ... it's a pitty but that's the reality. Daniel Turini wrote: After all, I was making no money. I confess, I used a pirate Turbo C and MS-DOS, but as soon as I earned some money as a junior programmer, I bought their licenses. It's my attitude also. :-) Daniel Turini wrote: It was almost the same prices as buying the books, and (good days), they went with a printed manual! Good old days of cheap prices ... they don't comeback ... :-( Daniel Turini wrote: Now I don't even know where the disks are anymore... Yeap, I known what you mean , it's part of our beloved computer history and evolution. Sometimes I miss those days ... good old funny days ... fighting for freeing the 640 kb of memory to play the old games on the floppy disks , the expanded and extended memory , configuring autoexec.bat and config.sys ... , all day long on the dos prompt, sniff :-( Cheers,Joao Vaz And if your dream is to care for your family, to put food on the table, to provide them with an education and a good home, then maybe suffering through an endless, pointless, boring job will seem to have purpose. And you will realize how even a rock can change the world, simply by remaining obstinately stationary.-Shog9
Joao Vaz wrote: Yeap, I known what you mean , it's part of our beloved computer history and evolution. Sometimes I miss those days ... good old funny days ... fighting for freeing the 640 kb of memory to play the old games on the floppy disks , the expanded and extended memory , configuring autoexec.bat and config.sys ... , all day long on the dos prompt, sniff Oh, I still keep with me an old disk clipping tool for using both sides of a single-faced 5/14" disk... My latest articles: XOR tricks for RAID data protection Win32 process suspend/resume tool
-
Joao Vaz wrote: Yeap, I known what you mean , it's part of our beloved computer history and evolution. Sometimes I miss those days ... good old funny days ... fighting for freeing the 640 kb of memory to play the old games on the floppy disks , the expanded and extended memory , configuring autoexec.bat and config.sys ... , all day long on the dos prompt, sniff Oh, I still keep with me an old disk clipping tool for using both sides of a single-faced 5/14" disk... My latest articles: XOR tricks for RAID data protection Win32 process suspend/resume tool
Daniel Turini wrote: Oh, I still keep with me an old disk clipping tool for using both sides of a single-faced 5/14" disk... Cool stuff :-D Cheers,Joao Vaz And if your dream is to care for your family, to put food on the table, to provide them with an education and a good home, then maybe suffering through an endless, pointless, boring job will seem to have purpose. And you will realize how even a rock can change the world, simply by remaining obstinately stationary.-Shog9
-
Warez have one application , to learn the product when the product is too damn expensive , like Autocad 2002 or 3D MAX ... For instance in Design courses they promote a lot of works on this 2 softwares , the students don't have the money to buy them , so they use it illegaly to perform their duties. Many times the schools don't have the right means neither the resources to let a bunch of students work on their projects classes. Sad but true. Another case was when was lokking for a job , I was unemployed , didn't have the money , already finnished my bachelor's degree , and didn't have right to student's discounts , so I pirated Visual Studio to learn the VB (shame on me ) language , when finnaly I was employed I and had the money I bought Visual C++ Professional Edition (I was sick of VB) , the same with a great program Partition Magic , and the same with Windows 2000 ... Now even I have uninstalled Office from my Computer because it was a pirated version , and now I use free linux word processors ... My friends from Computer area , ALL of them joke with me , because I'm too damn honest and they don't buy ANY legal software at all, they have more important things to pay , like their houses and cars . In opposition now I must use the Cash Advance from the bank, because in the 2nd time in 5 months I forgot to count with 2 checks that I passed some months ago, now if I only didn't bought Windows 2000 and VS.NET I had money to pay all my expenses and don't ask for a small loan from the bank ... this is why I tend each day that passes to use linux , I have to many expenses and Microsoft world at this time is too expensive to me (if you recall I pay my wife studies , she don't work) ... In the end I understand the warez concept , but only on a domestic scale , on on a large scale like this , I'm totally against. Just my $0,02 :) Cheers,Joao Vaz And if your dream is to care for your family, to put food on the table, to provide them with an education and a good home, then maybe suffering through an endless, pointless, boring job will seem to have purpose. And you will realize how even a rock can change the world, simply by remaining obstinately stationary.-Shog9
Joao Vaz wrote: to learn the product when the product is too damn expensive i would like to learn to drive a car at 200mph, but i can't afford a car that will go that fast. do i have the right to steal one that can? remember, the fact that software is easy to copy has nothing to do with the legality to using unlicensed copies. -c
Support regime change. Vote.
-
Navin wrote: 1. You want to try out software before buying it. Not all software can be tried using an evaluation license. I wouldn't even consider buying a software under this condition. They are trying to hide something from me, I don't like it. I feel the same about those softwares that have the "Save" menu disabled. It's plain stupid. Let your user LOVE your software, not HATE! Navin wrote: 2. If you have several machines and several licenses, it is easy to forget how many licenses you really need, and you may end up installing on too many machines. This is a excusable one for piracy. No sane person would send to jail a customer! My latest articles: XOR tricks for RAID data protection Win32 process suspend/resume tool
Daniel Turini wrote: I feel the same about those softwares that have the "Save" menu disabled. It's plain stupid. Let your user LOVE your software, not HATE! I found this out the hard way. Until recently, my ThumbNailer app prevented saving of settings for unregistered users. Just for fun, i changed it so that it adds a watermark/overlay image to the output instead. Sales went up almost immediately. -c
Support regime change. Vote.
-
Daniel Turini wrote: I feel the same about those softwares that have the "Save" menu disabled. It's plain stupid. Let your user LOVE your software, not HATE! I found this out the hard way. Until recently, my ThumbNailer app prevented saving of settings for unregistered users. Just for fun, i changed it so that it adds a watermark/overlay image to the output instead. Sales went up almost immediately. -c
Support regime change. Vote.
Chris Losinger wrote: I found this out the hard way. Until recently, my ThumbNailer app prevented saving of settings for unregistered users. Just for fun, i changed it so that it adds a watermark/overlay image to the output. Sales went up almost immediately. I believe that the best strategy is the drug-dealer one: let the user become addicted to your product. Let him use all your valuable features, free. But only for a limited time. Then, charge him! My latest articles: XOR tricks for RAID data protection Win32 process suspend/resume tool
-
Warez have one application , to learn the product when the product is too damn expensive , like Autocad 2002 or 3D MAX ... For instance in Design courses they promote a lot of works on this 2 softwares , the students don't have the money to buy them , so they use it illegaly to perform their duties. Many times the schools don't have the right means neither the resources to let a bunch of students work on their projects classes. Sad but true. Another case was when was lokking for a job , I was unemployed , didn't have the money , already finnished my bachelor's degree , and didn't have right to student's discounts , so I pirated Visual Studio to learn the VB (shame on me ) language , when finnaly I was employed I and had the money I bought Visual C++ Professional Edition (I was sick of VB) , the same with a great program Partition Magic , and the same with Windows 2000 ... Now even I have uninstalled Office from my Computer because it was a pirated version , and now I use free linux word processors ... My friends from Computer area , ALL of them joke with me , because I'm too damn honest and they don't buy ANY legal software at all, they have more important things to pay , like their houses and cars . In opposition now I must use the Cash Advance from the bank, because in the 2nd time in 5 months I forgot to count with 2 checks that I passed some months ago, now if I only didn't bought Windows 2000 and VS.NET I had money to pay all my expenses and don't ask for a small loan from the bank ... this is why I tend each day that passes to use linux , I have to many expenses and Microsoft world at this time is too expensive to me (if you recall I pay my wife studies , she don't work) ... In the end I understand the warez concept , but only on a domestic scale , on on a large scale like this , I'm totally against. Just my $0,02 :) Cheers,Joao Vaz And if your dream is to care for your family, to put food on the table, to provide them with an education and a good home, then maybe suffering through an endless, pointless, boring job will seem to have purpose. And you will realize how even a rock can change the world, simply by remaining obstinately stationary.-Shog9
in south africa for example the exchange rate makes most software totally unaffordable ... so people use pirate copies ... i didnt much cos i have friends in the states who can send me the real thing at very discounted rates i know a lot of biznesses who use illegal software cos a). too expensive (as i said above) and b). no-one is really gonna come and bust joe or jane public for using illegal copy of photoshop at home in cape town or wherever are they if big software companies realised this and made price differences for different countries they might actually get more sales in the poorer countries ... like if photoshop was r500 instead of r5000 in south africa i know many who would buy it rather than kazaa it :)
"... and so i said to him ... if it don't dance (or code) and you can't eat it either f**k it or throw it away"
biz stuff about me -
Joao Vaz wrote: to learn the product when the product is too damn expensive i would like to learn to drive a car at 200mph, but i can't afford a car that will go that fast. do i have the right to steal one that can? remember, the fact that software is easy to copy has nothing to do with the legality to using unlicensed copies. -c
Support regime change. Vote.
Chris Losinger wrote: i would like to learn to drive a car at 200mph, but i can't afford a car that will go that fast. do i have the right to steal one that can? Of course not . Chris Losinger wrote: remember, the fact that software is easy to copy has nothing to do with the legality to using unlicensed copies. It's not legal to use this . Period. Change of line. But in this situation to learn in colegue and only in that period , I understand the students and their choice for warez. In india , where the salaries stinks at all levels , where do you think that they can learn the technologies ? And why do you think Microsoft is so powerfull ? Due to piracy , of course. I personally only use fully legal and registered software, but many times as I already said I've used pirated copies, the products that I liked and use daily I bought it , the others I dropped it or replace them with free alternatives. That why I also like linux , despite the fact that I don't like at all the GPL licence . Now one clear thing , I'm totally against the abuse of the system by warez , that's totally unacceptable and represents the loss of billions of dollares to Global economy and is a great danger to the survival of our companies. Using warez for experimenting and learning the product , isn't totally bad , but , as long they buy the damn product after that or simply erase it from the harddrive. That's what I do. Cheers,Joao Vaz And if your dream is to care for your family, to put food on the table, to provide them with an education and a good home, then maybe suffering through an endless, pointless, boring job will seem to have purpose. And you will realize how even a rock can change the world, simply by remaining obstinately stationary.-Shog9
-
in south africa for example the exchange rate makes most software totally unaffordable ... so people use pirate copies ... i didnt much cos i have friends in the states who can send me the real thing at very discounted rates i know a lot of biznesses who use illegal software cos a). too expensive (as i said above) and b). no-one is really gonna come and bust joe or jane public for using illegal copy of photoshop at home in cape town or wherever are they if big software companies realised this and made price differences for different countries they might actually get more sales in the poorer countries ... like if photoshop was r500 instead of r5000 in south africa i know many who would buy it rather than kazaa it :)
"... and so i said to him ... if it don't dance (or code) and you can't eat it either f**k it or throw it away"
biz stuff about melauren wrote: in south africa for example the exchange rate makes most software totally unaffordable ... so people use pirate copies ... The same in India , Mexico, etc, etc, the software is to damn expensive in these contries. If only they could adjust their price from country to country, things would be much better , but I'm not seeing this happening anytime soon :-( Cheers,Joao Vaz And if your dream is to care for your family, to put food on the table, to provide them with an education and a good home, then maybe suffering through an endless, pointless, boring job will seem to have purpose. And you will realize how even a rock can change the world, simply by remaining obstinately stationary.-Shog9
-
Warez have one application , to learn the product when the product is too damn expensive , like Autocad 2002 or 3D MAX ... For instance in Design courses they promote a lot of works on this 2 softwares , the students don't have the money to buy them , so they use it illegaly to perform their duties. Many times the schools don't have the right means neither the resources to let a bunch of students work on their projects classes. Sad but true. Another case was when was lokking for a job , I was unemployed , didn't have the money , already finnished my bachelor's degree , and didn't have right to student's discounts , so I pirated Visual Studio to learn the VB (shame on me ) language , when finnaly I was employed I and had the money I bought Visual C++ Professional Edition (I was sick of VB) , the same with a great program Partition Magic , and the same with Windows 2000 ... Now even I have uninstalled Office from my Computer because it was a pirated version , and now I use free linux word processors ... My friends from Computer area , ALL of them joke with me , because I'm too damn honest and they don't buy ANY legal software at all, they have more important things to pay , like their houses and cars . In opposition now I must use the Cash Advance from the bank, because in the 2nd time in 5 months I forgot to count with 2 checks that I passed some months ago, now if I only didn't bought Windows 2000 and VS.NET I had money to pay all my expenses and don't ask for a small loan from the bank ... this is why I tend each day that passes to use linux , I have to many expenses and Microsoft world at this time is too expensive to me (if you recall I pay my wife studies , she don't work) ... In the end I understand the warez concept , but only on a domestic scale , on on a large scale like this , I'm totally against. Just my $0,02 :) Cheers,Joao Vaz And if your dream is to care for your family, to put food on the table, to provide them with an education and a good home, then maybe suffering through an endless, pointless, boring job will seem to have purpose. And you will realize how even a rock can change the world, simply by remaining obstinately stationary.-Shog9