Often companies will provide a great product in software, whether it be free or commercial, for years and it becomes a valuable piece of your computing environment. The, out of the blue, one of the updates either breaks the software, takes away an important feature, or perhaps even starts charging for a previously free product. With just about every application having an integrated update mechanism how does a user keep the fully functional software he/she knows and loves?
This happened to me once, long ago. I was in on the beta of what would become the Trend-Micro antivirus, although I didn't know it was a beat at the time. When Trend Micro updated the program from free to paid, they respected the users who had been using it for some time by agreeing to give those users free updates for life. I was stoked! A free antivirus for life was a pretty awesome thing to me. At least until my hard drive went belly up. This was back in the heady days before backing up was even a blip on my radar, or pretty much anyone else's either. So, I was screwed out of my previously free AV program and did not have the license handy to put into the new download, which meant I was going to have to pay if I wanted it anymore.
There are some things you can do to prevent this kind of occurrence. First, make regular backups, although I know some of you can't afford the capital for an extra hard drive. The next thing would be to always check the vendor's website before blindly clicking that update button. That way you can see what changes are headed your way. But even that may not help much as not many of the developers overtly post that they are going to start charging you on the next version. Take the old Realplayer for instance, or the initial offering of Rising Antivirus.
But one foolproof trick I found is to not click the update button at all. What you say? But then how do I keep up with security patches and the like? Quite simple, my dear Watson. Let the software check for the update, but do NOT download and install. Instead go to the vendors website, check out the nitty gritty of the update, then, if you want to go ahead with the update, manually download and install. When you do this, be sure to SAVE the installer, do not run it. This way you keep the package on your computer. When you do this you can uninstall the updated software (preferably with an uninstaller like Revouninstaller) and reinstall this older version if the new update borks your system. And once you have determined that the new download is good to go (after running it for a little while to get production testing), you keep the newer installer and get rid of the old one. I currently have over 200 installers that I keep on my computer in an archive. (Most of you would not need to keep this many by any means.) This comes in handy more times than you might think. For example, TVersity, a program that allows you to very easily stream media from your PC to your XBox 360, PS3, or Wii recently updated to a paid version. I have the installer of the version right before it became the paid version, so I do not have to worry about installing the update and getting screwed out of my functionality.
So, this is a quick and dirty way to make sure that once you fall in love with the free program, they don't turn into a gold-digging monster and leave you hanging without that functionality.
This happened to me once, long ago. I was in on the beta of what would become the Trend-Micro antivirus, although I didn't know it was a beat at the time. When Trend Micro updated the program from free to paid, they respected the users who had been using it for some time by agreeing to give those users free updates for life. I was stoked! A free antivirus for life was a pretty awesome thing to me. At least until my hard drive went belly up. This was back in the heady days before backing up was even a blip on my radar, or pretty much anyone else's either. So, I was screwed out of my previously free AV program and did not have the license handy to put into the new download, which meant I was going to have to pay if I wanted it anymore.
There are some things you can do to prevent this kind of occurrence. First, make regular backups, although I know some of you can't afford the capital for an extra hard drive. The next thing would be to always check the vendor's website before blindly clicking that update button. That way you can see what changes are headed your way. But even that may not help much as not many of the developers overtly post that they are going to start charging you on the next version. Take the old Realplayer for instance, or the initial offering of Rising Antivirus.
But one foolproof trick I found is to not click the update button at all. What you say? But then how do I keep up with security patches and the like? Quite simple, my dear Watson. Let the software check for the update, but do NOT download and install. Instead go to the vendors website, check out the nitty gritty of the update, then, if you want to go ahead with the update, manually download and install. When you do this, be sure to SAVE the installer, do not run it. This way you keep the package on your computer. When you do this you can uninstall the updated software (preferably with an uninstaller like Revouninstaller) and reinstall this older version if the new update borks your system. And once you have determined that the new download is good to go (after running it for a little while to get production testing), you keep the newer installer and get rid of the old one. I currently have over 200 installers that I keep on my computer in an archive. (Most of you would not need to keep this many by any means.) This comes in handy more times than you might think. For example, TVersity, a program that allows you to very easily stream media from your PC to your XBox 360, PS3, or Wii recently updated to a paid version. I have the installer of the version right before it became the paid version, so I do not have to worry about installing the update and getting screwed out of my functionality.
So, this is a quick and dirty way to make sure that once you fall in love with the free program, they don't turn into a gold-digging monster and leave you hanging without that functionality.
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