Thanks Shameer. I think making poeple more aware of it will be a big help. U have used The eLearning Suites for a few releases, so I thought I knew how it behaved in a trial. I guess this must be a new policy regarding the expiration. It is a shame that there isn't a more automatic way for the expiration to be deactivated merely by the purchase of the product instead of a republish being needed, but as long as people know about it, we can keep a running record of what will need it.

I really would like to try out the trial of the e-Learning Suite as I had planned if I can. I am not sure how the expiration system works under these circulmstance. I have a licensed copy of Captivate 6. If I install the eLearning Suite does the system know that I have a license for Captivate 6 or does it actually see the two Captivate's as entirely different? If so, How will I know which one I am working with so I am not surprised by having used the wrong one when I need to use something for my classes. Most likley if I build it, I will definitely want to use it. I assume I can take the published output from the Captive that is part of the eLEarning Suite and publish it in the Captivate 6 that I have the license to, or no? I do have licenced versions of the Dreamweaver, Audition, Flash and Photoshop through Creative Cloud. How does the suite impact those? Do those go back a trial condition or does the eLearning Suite see those as different as well?

The Creative Cloud is part of why I want to try out the eLearning Suite. Normally, I have bought the eLearning Suite (this will be my third one), but the Cloud has the Illustrator (my favorite way to make graphics for my Captivate projects), as well as Edge and  Muse which I wanted to try out now while Creative Cloud has the lower intriductory price. I felt those were important to explore along with Captivate as part of our future mobile stragtegy. As I understand it, the only way to get Edge and Muse are through the Creative Cloud. So this time around I have been in a quandry as to which way to go. My primary workhorses have always been Captivate and Illustrator. Illustrator isn't part of the eLearning suite and Captivate isn't a part of any thing Illustrator is in. Anyway, I am just trying to figure out what way to go with all the options that are ouit there and I figure the trial of the eLearning Suite might lend some clarity for my decisions. There are a few new elements in this version that I have watched the tutorials on but I am not yet sure I understand what they do, like the multi-sco packager. I was also curious abou the potential of Presenter. I have always dismissed Presenter as just an extension to PowerPoint which isn't useful to me since I am on a MAc, but this release looked like it had some features that didn't lock it to PowerPoint so I am interested in giving it a look see. I can wait on decision until a longer break when I have more time to just play instead of build for use. Early next summer, or perhaps the Thanksgiving/Christmas break if the eLearning Suite will negatively impact my licenced Captivate 6 or my licensed Creative Cloud software.

I must admit to assuming that the EULA was just the typical no reverse engineering and no one can sue type of thing. Those things make my eyes go cross-eyed even when I read them from top to bottom - mom here. I am not making my Captivate projects for commericail use. Our project is a bunch of home school moms from around the US that are collaboratively making courses for a home school online course co-operative made entirely of us moms that home school. As near as I can tell, our project was the first one to ever try such a thing. A few more have popped up of similar toool use, but all the others charge tuition. We are the only truly non-profit, non-tuition, trully volunteer project doing this. None of us get paid, the classes are free to home school children, and we don't sell the courses. Voluntary donations from the families pay for our online classroom and LMS. In the past two releases I have bought the e-Learning Suite myself. This summer I felt our project had enough momentum and with the Adobe subscription model making it possible to try to get at least get Captivate fora few of the other moms that wanted to see if they liked it and would use it. I am not sure if 'commercial use' use applies here or not, but I will have to assume we collaborative home school moms may get lumped in even if we are not making these projects for money at any step of the way.

By the way, I have had two full-night, 8 hour 'sleeps'. Yay! The continuous 18-hour work days without a day off since July 15th is now coming to a close. It is a tough time of the year each year since I am the only admin/secretary and our porject has grown so much. We will be serving over 500 live classroom students and several hundred at-your-own pace students this year all on about 14 volunteers (many of us teach multiple classes). It is a labor of love for all of us as we try to serve the home school community of which we are a part.

Hi Marion,

Once again, sorry about the confusion and rework this caused.

It is not required to uninstall the existing version and then install a new licensed version. You can directly license your installed trial, and then republish your project using this new version- and the published  course should no longer expire.

We’ve tested this workflow across multiple machines and have not faced an issue.

If you are facing this issue, it would help if we can get on a Connect session investigate this further on your set-up. Please suggest a time (preferably morning US eastern time, or late evening US eastern time).

You can reach me on shameer at adobe dot com

Thanks,

Shameer

Shameer Ayyappan

Sr. Product Manager - Captivate | eLearning Suite | Presenter

http://blogs.adobe.com/captivate

http://facebook.com/adobecaptivate

Adobe Captivate Forum<http://captivate.adobe.com/

@Rod - Nah, I am a die hard Illustrator fan. Once you have been using Illustrator you get too spoiled to go back to Inkscape. lol

I was totally sold on Illustrator before Captivate came along when I was working in Web Premium to make learning materials for my own children and paint digital portraits (used Photoshop in Web Premium for that). I am willing to spend the money on Illustrator and Captivate. I believe in both products and plan to keep both at the core of my workflow. With them being in different suites or stand alone options it gives me a decision quandary is all. I moved to Mac in December, so my Windows based Captivate and Illustrator are basically doorstops unless I want to keep working in Parallels and Windows for the next many years which I don't. I wil get my eLearning Suite plus an extra prurchase of Illustrator vs Creative Cloud plus Captivate decision made just like everyone else that has favorite software items split between different purchase options. The trial expiration monkeywrench just made the decsion process a tad more 'interesting' (cough, cough) than I had anticipated. lol.

I really am leaning toward the Cloud plus Captivate. I realize I will lose the round-tripping, but I actually didn't get too dependent on it. I realize I can put Illustrator objects in to Photoshop and then put Photoshop objects in to Captivate but it was a hastle. In the past, I was the entire development department for most of our project materials, so updates coming in from Photoshop files wasn't a big deal since I was the artist as well as the Captivate builder. I am working to change that and get Captivate into the hands of the other homeschool moms that are making courses though. The subscription model has been the key to that. Typically, a mom that wants to offer a course to other homeschool families is only going to be building that course for the summer and then some during the school year that first year of teaching it. The eLearning Suite or even just Captivate by itself was too expensive for us to provide a full boxed copy for such a short term use, I I would try to provide the graphics and the build as much as I had time for since I had the software and background as an artist. Since I build, admin, teach, and play secretary, I have always lived with being spread very thin to try to get everything done. With the subscription model, the moms that would have had to ask me to make their graphics and build can now get their own subscription provided by the project for the time they are building. Some moms find the learning curve too steep and will not take the offer and I still help those, but we have a handful that have taken the offer and have become busy independent builders. Once their course is built and they no longer need the tools for building, the subscription is cancelled and we can turn the funds to the next mom that is building her course. My guess is that there will be some that will fall in love with the tools and even keep their own subscription going for building the resources they want to use in their own family's homeschooling. That is how I started out: the kids and I built materials for our own learning projects. I never liked textbooks for pre-high school. We always learned by researching, hands-on, real world, and creating learning products as our 'proof of learning'. Why let the curriculum makers have all the fun? lol

The next phase of our project, once we get creative moms the tools, is to expand it to offer classes based on the subscriptions for the kids and move from them consuming the curriculum to them making their own like my own family has done it for so many years. This is all possible because of the subscription model. No one would be able to afford to get their feet wet otherwise. In this future goal, I se ethe Cloud as being the key. We will have kids from all cretaive bents to be working with: artistic (art, animators, photographers), musical, dramatic, writers, etc. The Cloud makes sense for that future because it is a one stop place to serve all their needs for creating. Captivate might never be a part of the Cloud, but that is OK. We will provide Captivate at least to the instructors. It would be more ideal though if it were part of what the kids would have in their own hands in the Cloud option. It would be ideal for them to pull all their creative leanings together in to as a core way to present their final 'gallery of learning' as they use it as a vehicle to teach others. InDesign tools and web site building tools will do well too though. I like the direction Muse is heading for furure use with the students as their portfolio core. For the more tech savy students, Dreamweaver. The key is that they are both right there in the same suite which simplifies things immensely. The subscription model makes the whole idea work because the initial start up costs for each family is less and families can stop the subscriptoin when the classes are done so we can get the momentum going for the whole idea to work. It will take years yet, but that is where I want to go. It worked great in my family. I think it can work great in a larger-scale project too.

No, I did not have the multi-site license. 

I now have the yearly subscription optionof version 6.  I started with version 5.5. single PC copy.  Within days of my trial expiring and starting the 5.5 single-use subscription, version 6 came out.  I then started working with the 6 trial.  I had completed projects using both trials (5.5 and 6).