[NTLK] TimeTrax Registration

From: John Hay (OceanCity_at_mac.com)
Date: Fri Dec 09 2005 - 07:06:07 PST


Disease, sickness, divorce, bankruptcy, and death, are not "normally"
mission-critical goals, however they can occur without notice and
with a downside.

I note once again, and please correct me if I am wrong, that the
registration license for TimeTrax [which I have come to depend upon
for critical scheduling and time management] is tied to the Newton's
hardware serial number rather than the registered user's name.

To plan for the future in the event of a partial or total Newton unit
failure, loss, or destruction, I have acquired several spare Newton
2x00's to facilitate a quick recovery. Along these same lines I am
diligent to make frequent FULL backups of my Newton. With a rather
substantial investment in spare Newtons and redundant daily backups I
believe I am relatively well prepared for the eventuality of the
demise of my current day-to-day Newton device.

The one fly in the ointment however would seem to be the possibility
that when I need to pull out a spare Newton when my day-to-day unit
is no longer usable, that TimeTrax [which would appear to be centered
in Germany at University of Erlangen-Nürnberg] may no longer exist or
be reachable by email, or any other means for me to obtain a new
registration code.

When needed, the first thing I will do [and I have tested this
methodology many times successfully] is to hard-reset one of my
spare Newtons and then simply do a FULL restore. I then have a
fully functional mirrored Newton unit to use and I'm up and running
in say 5-10 minutes.

Back to TimeTrax licensing protocol, with the spare Newton now ready
for my day-to-day use, I am then unavoidably presented with a
notification on TimeTrax's Newton screen that "....This version of
TimeTrax has expired! Please register this software. Please go to
the About window and submit us the serial number!" Note the
exclamation points are embedded in this message, I did not add them.

I should state for the record that I operate in good faith as a
paying user of any and all software which I use, in no way would
condone otherwise, and on any occasion that my "colleagues" ask for a
"copy" of anything I make this _perfectly_ clear to them explaining
the duty each of us has to the developers to compensate them for
their hard work, time, and substantial financial investments to bring
software to the free market.

What a pitty it would be that the net result of this licensing
strategy resulted in the loss of sales to the wonderful and dedicated
professionals at TimeTrax, and/or one of their registered user's
being unable to use TimeTrax to access all of their mission critical
data each time they must use new hardware, i.e. their next [spare]
Newton device in the inevitable march of time. To make matters even
worse it is _more_ likely over time that this exact issue will become
more acute as _increasingly_ more Newtons fail from normal wear and
tear.

I have posted to this list previously about this issue with growing
concern noted from the members. I have tried contacting Config
Informationstechnik eG in Röttenbach, Germany at their web posted
email contact address but do not appear to have ever received any
comment or response from them as the developers of TimeTrax, although
their web presence would appear to be current and they are taking
new orders. It's possible of course they responded to me but that I
never received their communication(s) for any number of reasons so I
certainly do not wish to cast any aspersions.

As a last resort to be heard I will send a courtesy copy of _this_
post to the TimeTrax people in Germany for their consideration. I
fully understand their needs as a business to be compensated for
their products and for them to implement as they see fit whatever
protection scheme is appropriate for their needs. The unfortunate
result however of their current software licensing protocol is that I
and others, in light of the inevitability of hardware failure and the
[perhaps equally catastrophic] demise of Config Informationstechnik
eG in Röttenbach, Germany [perish the thought!] is that I and others
are forced to take a hard look at weather or not we can afford
loosing access to our TimeTrax data when these two possibilities
[inevitabilities ?] collide.

I would be more than willing to do whatever Config
Informationstechnik eG in Röttenbach, Germany could ask of me
contractually or financially to assure them I will not be abusing or
misusing their software license, and in any event ask for their
consideration and understanding. I will await their apply.

Sincerely,

John Hay
Registered TimeTrax user
USA

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