PC Tools wants you to rent for life...

After finding out that I had been "slammed" with continuous annual renewels with Tweak Manager, which hasn't been upgraded in 6 years, I wrote a nasty letter and got a refund eventually. Now, the same thing for Registry Mechanic(also for XP). Beware if you want to simply purchase a simple utility which is rarely upgraded: You may be an unwitting renter not a buyer. For virus and malware programs, which have daily updates, I have no quarrel with subscriptions. But external re-ups with basic helper programs smells a little greedy to me. Only a matter of time, I guess......

 

I think for the most part you can get by just fine using the free alternatives.

 

With software you're always a renter, never a buyer, unless you got the source code, and the rights to copy, alter, distribute to the public, and prevent others from doing likewise (basic copyright stuff, folks).

That being said, there seems to be a little trendlet amongst certain providers to make the automatic renewal feature (i.e., basically an additional payment for the right to obtain upgrades, should any ever appear) the default purchase point, which is, as you rightly point out, very annoying, particularly if either that fact is not clearly stated or they make it very difficult to figure out how to change from auto renew to manual renew (i.e., one-time payment only).

 

"Trendlet" is the word Ive been seeking all this time......
I defer to the better wordsmith.

Cheers,

 

You can learn a lot of new vocabulary from Shyster's posts.

 

Gotta be a lawyer.

 

No doubt, his posts are the only other place I've seen force majeure outside of the real estate contracts I go through every day.