Issue registering RH7

[wbrisett]

Long story, but the short of it is, we (my company) purchased the Technical Communications Suite 1. We had to update some documentation using RH (not normally something we use or would ever use). The IT department could not find our original discs, but did find our customer number and serial number. I was able to find a standalone RH7 installer. Installed that and entered the SN provided by our IT department. It claims that number is invalid. Can you not use the standalone RH7 installer with the TCS1 serial number? One would think it should work, but it doesn't. Talking with the Adobe Customer Support staff was pretty futile, they wanted us to update to TCS2 or RH8, but since this is a one-time update, we really don't want to spend the $1000.

Any ideas?

[Peter Grainge]

The TCS and standalone product numbers are different so I would not expect that to work. However, you are entitled to get a download of TCS1 as long as you have proof of purchase, which you have. Go back to Customer Support and insist on what you are entitled to.

Post back if they decline.

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[wbrisett]

It's been interesting, turns out the SN is a volume license, so I kept getting pushed to the volume licensing staff. Pretty much all they can do is offer you an upgrade. Talking with the regular support staff, they were able to offer me little more than what the volume licensing staff offered me. I finally was able to talk to a "manager" about the issue and told him I expected one of three things. Either a download link to the TCS1, a disc, or a new serial number that would work with the RH7 that we have. Adobe has been making future purchasing decisions of products very easy since all they seem to care about any more is collecting money through upgrades rather than trying to help companies who need to get a product out. If I have to spend money, I can spend 1/2 what Adobe wants and get the competitor's product that can read the old RH7 project.

Wayne

[Peter Grainge · Accepted solution]

It seems I was wrong stating that you are entitled to the media. I thought that was the case but I just found this page.

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/153/tn_15300.html

Media is only available for the previous version for 90 days after a new version. So only RH8 media is available now.

Not sure but I suspect Microsoft and MadCap would have a similar policy.

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[wbrisett]

Thanks Peter. We did end up doing an upgrade, however this whole experience has left a very bad taste with our company. Moving forward part of our evaluation of tools will be scenarios like this and how companies choose to deal with it. As far as I'm concerned this is just one more reason I see us moving more away from Adobe than towards Adobe's tools. In particular, with DITA we have many options that simply weren't available to us a couple of years ago, including our CMS which you can create and edit content in directly if you want. We've used FrameMaker exclusively for unstructured documents and we're currently using FM8 for DITA documents, but there is a push inside our company to move away from it because of system requirements and how they changed things in FM9, which we know we'll have to move to at some point. Who knows if we really will move away, but I've  already had discussions with other members of our tools evaluation team and upgrades and lost media is now going to be something that is scrutinized much heavier when evaluating things in the future.

Wayne

[Peter Grainge]

I understand there may be many reasons for changing tools but lost media would be way down my list as it is something within your control.

My priorities would be how well the tools do the job. I doubt you will ever lose media again.

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[wbrisett]

You're right, it's not a top priority in evaluation. It's how a company deals you from a customer standpoint. I for years worked for a fortune 500 company as part of the customer support staff. In fact, I even worked the phones for a while, so I understand what customer support is and isn't, how to deal with people and how to deal with various requests. My experience with Adobe in recent years (not just this incident) is really what I think has truly soured me with the company. They are excellent in the sales department, it's the support that I find lacking. To put this in perspective, I have recently had to deal with both MadCap and Webworks for various support issues and both were excellent in their own way (although it took a bit more with WebWorks to be responsive). This is where I think competition is great, you make a list of what you need to do, look at the various tools to see which fit the bill, then you can evaluate the 'other' things. You can have an excellent product, but poor support or an OK product and great support and depending on what I'm trying to do, I might evaluate the OK product higher because they have great support.

Anyhow, this issue is closed because we we chose to upgrade, so we could get the project underway. Although, I had other ways of working around the issues by using other products. We chose this path due to the various learning-curves in other tools the writers would have to go through.

Wayne