unlimited free license expires?

tomy

My freeware license ver.8 will expire in some days.

But the download says:

"Hier können Sie sich unsere Freeware Versionen herunterladen. Diese Versionen stehen Ihnen ohne zeitliche Begrenzung kostenfrei zur Verfügung."

means:

you can use the software for free and with no time limit

Who can help me to get a real unlimited license to run?

thanks

tom

Unknown

Hy,

The BitDefender 8 Free needs a new license every year.

I've send you an PM with the license key for one year but from now on please use the support e-mail.

So, everyone who's BitDefender 8 Free Licenses are expiring are invited to send an e-mail to support@bitdefender.com to get new licenses.

Mook

Hello.

I just installed BitDefender 8 (Free) just now but it says 'This version of BitDefender has expired!'

I just sent an email to support@bitdefender.com to request for a new license. How do I renew my license?

Thanks.

alexcrist

Hi Mook,

Here is your answer:

Hy,

The BitDefender 8 Free needs a new license every year.

[...]

So, everyone who's BitDefender 8 Free Licenses are expiring are invited to send an e-mail to support@bitdefender.com to get new licenses.

For the future, try to read the thread you post in. The exact same question you asked was already answered.

Cris.

Mook

Ditto, Cris. We need the blind to lead the blind I suppose.

I repeat: I just sent an email to support@bitdefender.com. No license forthcoming. No response, nada, zilch, nay, nani mo nai.

So how do I renew the license?

alexcrist

Hi Mook,

Yeah, sorry about that. I missed that sentence

Anyway, you can contact LiveSupport and choose Customer Service. I'm sure they can help you.

www.bitdefender.com/site/Live-Assistance.html

Cris.

Mook

All good, Cris. I appreciate your help.

Someone from BitDefender responded to my email (after about two days) and they sent me a serial key for the free version.

Actually, I didn't know previously that you use this serial key to enter into the 'Register' panel because the Register panel says something like: 'You are about to register this product to become the full version' or something like that.

So my previous confusion was actually to mean: where do I enter the serial key. Maybe I should have more clearly defined what I meant to ask.

So I entered the key they gave me and it got registered and I merrily downloaded my first virus definitions. So I thought everything was okay.

However, after the download, a popup window came up saying something like:

'This product is about to expire! You only have 30 days to use it.'

Now I'm a little bit confused again. Does this mean that after 30 days I have to request for another serial key? Probably so, because it says on the Registration tab: Expires on 6/21/2007. Since I entered the serial key just now, today (5/21), then the validity is indeed only for 30 days.

So maybe what Rudi Bedy meant on his/her post (see above on this thread) was that BitDefender Free needs a new license every MONTH, not every year.

And nowhere is it stated that people who want to use the Free Edition should request for a serial key every month, not on the product info pages nor on this forum.

It's free so maybe you get what you pay for. A level of inconvenience so you can keep on using the thing.

I guess the 'free' in 'Free Edition' actually means 'free to use but you'd have to ask for licenses every month and our popup window will remind you frequently that you should just buy the paid version of our product'. " />

They should have called this a 'Free Trial Edition So You Can Decide To Buy The Paid Version' or something like this, hehehe.

Mook

Yep, there's a nag screen all right. A message pops up every few minutes or so saying:

Your copy of BitDefender is about to expire!

I wish that BitDefender shouldn't advertise the Free Edition as something free at all. It just becomes an extra trial edition aside from the regular Evaluation version they allow for download. The free versions of the other anti virus software popularly available are 'true' free versions, they allow unlimited use of the software with limited functionality for free, WITHOUT nagging.

If I had known that the Free Edition would be just another trial copy with nagging features, I would have just downloaded the Evaluation version 10 instead.

So I'm now set to simply uninstall BitDefender as this is too troublesome for me. I'd best get something else instead.

For my needs, I don't need realtime On Access scanning, just On Demand scanning, and I'm happy with that. Maybe there are other users like me, who don't want the extra overhead of having to scan each and every file that accesses the computer. So maybe if the BitDefender people consider this comment, then perhaps a good suggestion for them would be to have two versions of BitDefender: one with On Access and the other with On Demand only for a lesser price.

All in all, trying out this Free Edition of BitDefender has just been a waste of my time.

alexcrist

Hi Mook,

I've never used the free version, but I think there must be some mistake. BD 8 Free should work exactly as a paid version (which means you have to renew your license every year, but for free).

Anyway, you can always use BD Online Scan (which is also free, 100% license free ).

Cris.