life of a software package

[richard]

Hi everyone
I'm having an interesting experience with DolphinCadCam's Partmaster programme .in oct 2011 I purchased a
"hobbyist" version of Partmaster pro V10. (about $500us) not cheap. I have been very happy with it . DFX to gcode is fast
and easy with pretty comprehensive tooling and machining options including a animated preview .I use it mainly for panel cutouts and accurate hole drilling for my various projects . my pcb program(s) provide a nice dfx to feed into partmaster for this purpose
However last week the motherboard on my pc(win7) "died" and a completely compatible replacement was unobtainable ,so
windows had to be reinstalled . I took the "opportunity" to upgrade to windows 8.1 and an I7 cpu . everything worked
smoothly until Partmaster . partmaster won't activate the licence. Ok i thought win8 problem , I'll put Partmaster on the win7 laptop ,
guess what . Partmaster still won't activate.
After contacting support at Dolphincadcam I was informed basically buy a upgrade or suffer ,they can't /won't allow the product to be activated any longer
(it could be re activated and was last July after I tried their latest offering and it totally trashed my existing installation)

has anyone else had similar experience ?
Is it acceptable for a $500 us package to expire after 3 years ,with no upfront disclaimer before purchase?
I have never experienced this sort of attitude form a software vender before and I feel somewhat cheated.


I'm not a happy camper today

there a more details if interested in this forum if your interested
http://gearotic.com/ESW/FavIcons/index.php?topic=1106.0