"FREE" VisualMill

I was very excited to see the announcement that MecSoft was going to
give away copies of VisualMill 3.0. I have been wanting to try this
product for some time and figured now would be the time to try it. I
am quite disappointed by what I found on their website.

While it is good to have this free download of VisualMill 3.0 Basic
everyone should be aware that it is only good until March 1, 2003.

Once again we have a marketing executive telling us one thing then
when we get to their site the actuality is a different thing.

In his announcement letter, Greg Haywood - VP of WW Sales and
Marketing - Mecsoft Corporation, says "I am the VP of WW sales and
Marketing for MecSoft Corporation, and I have decided to give our
previous release of VisualMill Basic away to the public, schools,
broke people, and anyone else that just enjoys's free stuff!"

This is not quite correct. What he is giving away is a three and one
half month license to use VisualMill 3.0. (So much for "FREE")

It says on the website that when it expires on March 1, 2003 that you
can renew your registration and re-download the product.

This is not free. This means that I need to take my time next March
and reregister then redownload then reinstall the product. Who knows
when the next time after that will be or if they will allow a next
time?

The long and the short of this is that I can't really count on
VisualMill 3.0 being available in the future like I could if it were
truly free with a perpetual license and no reactivation needed. This
means that if I put a lot of work in trying it I will be forced to
upgrade to VisualMill 4.0 or risk not having the software available
in the future.

In his letter, Mr Haywood also says, "We believe that by offering a
product for free that our competitors are charging for, you will come
back to us for your more advanced tooling needs"

This could be correct, I can easily see that I might try the product
and go back to buy the new version. However Mr Haywood has managed to
alienate me by not stating in his announcement letter that it was
only good for three and one half months and then would need to be
renewed and reinstalled. If they can't be straight about trial
software, how straight are they being about the products they charge
for?

I have used many trial versions of software products and have
eventually bought many of those products. Why can't the marketing
people just be straight with us? In this case a big deal is made
about giving us a backrelease product for "FREE" but it is really
nothing more than a trial period. They can say that we will be able
to reregister it in the future but how many of you want to put a lot
of work into trying something, trusting that this company will take
care of you in the future. If they really intend on renewing it in
the future for free why don't they just make it a perpetual license
with no reactivation required. The fact that they have it expire on
March 1, 2003 implies that they might not allow reregistration. After
all, it is more work for them to reregister it than giving a
perpetual license right from the beginning so they must expect a
payback.

Once again, disappointed by "BS"