4 Replies Latest reply: Jul 4, 2008 7:22 AM by John T Smith RSS

    OT - Does Adobe EXPIRE non-Demo Products?

    John T Smith CommunityMVP
      Over in the (little used these days) OLD Premiere forum
      there is a message from someone who says his 5-year old
      install of Premiere has expired and stopped working

      This is NOT the demo version that expired... he said he
      bought the real, full version 5 years ago and it has now
      stopped working with an "expired" message

      http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx/.3bc2ca84

      Very few people posting over there now, but I know that
      many of the PPro people here started with old Premiere,
      so thought I'd ask to see if anyone knows anything about
      Adobe putting an expiration date in their programs?
        • 1. Re: OT - Does Adobe EXPIRE non-Demo Products?
          Community Member
          I vaguely recall that in the "old" days, before activation was necessary, Adobe had several classes of licenses. Beta for reviewers, educational, restricted and many others as well as unlimited. Many classes had time restrictions which in those unsophisticated days could be easily defeated by a simple date change. To my knowledge for software in the US no mention of a time limit were made for a full retail or upgrade version. However, Europe (and especially France) had a well deserved reputation of having a large percentage of users with pirated copies. So it does not surprise me that Adobe may have sold time limited licenses in Europe. For a properly registered retail copy, I would expect that Adobe would be willing to provide an unlimited serial number to the original purchaser. However a paid upgrade to the newest version would be wise. (Best to wait a few months!!)
          • 2. Re: OT - Does Adobe EXPIRE non-Demo Products?
            It shouldn't I suppose. But I saw it requires all the time an update which is good..
            _______
            Virtual Office
            • 3. Re: OT - Does Adobe EXPIRE non-Demo Products?
              Bill Hunt CommunityMVP
              John,

              I do not have any experience with older US versions of Premiere, but can tell you that I have a 10 year old, give or take, version of PS 4, that is still going strong. Heck, it even tries to "update" its little self. I've got PM 5, 6 and 7 on that same machine, and all still function perfectly. (I have a couple of clients, whose sep houses, and/or printers need some things done just one way, so I keep legacy copies to satisfy these special requests, even though I have CS2 for everything else with the Production Studio.) I've also got TypeAlign and Streamline, and they date back to PM3 and PS 2.5 days. All still work fine. Just installed them both on a graphics station, but they are on the original install on one "legacy" machine, designed to use some older programs in an emmulation mode.

              I would wager that that post was an "urban ledgend," but, like I stated, do not have an old Premiere. Still, if other Adobe products do NOT expire, I'd have doubts about Premiere.

              @ Pierre - all of my older Adobe products are the full versions, most upgraded from the original version, when they hit the PC. Heck, my PageMaker is actually an Aldus license, packaged with Freehand and PhotoStyler.

              Hunt
              • 4. Re: OT - Does Adobe EXPIRE non-Demo Products?
                John T Smith CommunityMVP
                That was from a LONG time ago, but my "hazy" memory is that the OP is in the UK, and there was some discussion that some "special" version may have entered the retail chain over there... not a 30-day demo, but some kind of "real" version that did have an expiration date

                But, posting the message here to find out if anyone else had seen that message was really all I knew about the problem

                I have also never had a full retail (or pre-installed OEM) product expire (vendor stop supporting and updating, yes... such as a version of Norton Anti-Virus I had on a Win2000 computer stopped receiving updates)