Looking for cheap laser software

[james1095]

I'm sorry to hear that the license scheme kept you from buying Spaghetti. I have been looking into adding a dongle option for people who need to use it on more than one PC but I have not followed up on it, yet.

In the meantime, for those who need to run it on more than one computer I have always offered a 2nd license at a much reduced cost. And, although my public policy is that I don't allow transfering licenses, I have always worked with those who ended up upgrading to a new machine.

I don't need to run it on more than one computer at a time, but given the churn that occurs, upgrading/swapping computer hardware in the course of experimenting I don't want to get locked to one PC and then have that croak on me. I've been burned by copy protection in the past and it always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. In some cases the protection was such a hassle that as a legitimate paid user I still had to go download a crack to bypass it. The fact that you're willing to work with a user to get it transferred to a new machine is nice, although I'm still a little paranoid about losing support a few years down the road when hardware fails and I have many hours invested in content.

It may be different with a niche product like this, but the usual observation is that a software product gets cracked within a very short time of being on the market, at which point the protection is a hassle for legitimate users and the pirated version is more convenient. I'm an honest user, I pay for my software (and music) but I'm bothered in principal by DRM and protection schemes and avoid them when possible.

[buffo]

I seriously doubt that anyone will crack Spaghetti. First, not many people use it, so it's not on the radar of the cracking groups that normally spend time figuring out how to beat various DRM schemes. Second, the people that do use it *really* like it, so why would they jeopardize further development by trying to crack it? Finally, Spaghetti has been on the market for quite some time already (coming up on 2 years, if I'm not mistaken), so if there was any effort to crack it you probably would have heard about it by now.

If you like what Spaghetti can do for you, and it's within your budget for laser show software, then there's no reason not to buy it. As Gary said, he will work with you if you have a hardware issue down the road. He is the only developer, so he is the one you'll be dealing with in the future. And if he tells you something, he means it. That's been good enough for lots of other Spaghetti users; maybe you should just trust the guy?

Adam

[JohnYayas]

I actually found a Russian website where someone was offering a couple hundred dollars to anyone who could provide a crack for Spaghetti. I was kind of flattered that it was getting attention way over there.