Life of a Sysadmin

The occassional trials and tribulations of a jack of all tr ades sysadmin in a startup in Silicon Valley

archives

April 2008 (1)
March 2008 (6)
December 2007 (6)
October 2007 (1)
September 2007 (1)
August 2007 (2)
July 2007 (1)
June 2007 (5)
May 2007 (5)
April 2007 (3)
March 2007 (6)
February 2007 (2)
January 2007 (3)
December 2006 (4)
November 2006 (3)
October 2006 (3)
August 2006 (3)
July 2006 (1)
June 2006 (2)
May 2006 (4)
April 2006 (2)
March 2006 (5)
February 2006 (5)
January 2006 (7)
December 2005 (2)
November 2005 (6)
October 2005 (4)
September 2005 (4)
August 2005 (1)
July 2005 (2)
June 2005 (3)
May 2005 (4)
April 2005 (1)
March 2005 (2)

March 2008

Evaluation Licenses, or How to annoy a sys admin

I was considering a major upgrade to our backup system (for more robust backups of laptops), but before I committed to making such a large purchase, I sought an evaluation license that would add the extra features to our backup software. With the evaluation license installed, I poked, prodded, and happily tested.

We ended up deciding against the upgrade, and after the 30 day evaluation license expired, my backup software simply stopped working. You see when I installed the evaluation license (which gave permission to use nearly every feature of the software), it overwrote the permanent license that was installed.

Sure there were emailed reminders every two hours for the 7 days before it stopped working. As I had stopped using all the extra features by the end of the 30 days, why couldn't the software just revert to my previous permanent license? Why did I specifically have to go re-install my license?