By now everyone’s familiar with software activation so I’m not going to go into the explanations for it. While each company has its own system they all do pretty much the same thing. They control how many computers on which you can run the software. Notice I that I said run, not install.
With Adobe’s activation system, the user is permitted two activations in order to allow the use of work machine and home machine or even a laptop. It’s important note that this is with the provision that both machines are used by the same user and never at the same time. One of the major concerns users had was the legitimate use of more than two machines. To accommodate users in that catagory when CS2 was released, it contained a transfer activation feature. A few clicks and the software was deactivated on one machine and this allowed for activation on another.
This was a boon to anyone with two offices and a laptop. That person could install the software on all three machines and simply deactivate one of the office machine and activate the laptop. With this system Adobe hoped to control “casual piracy” and still allow honest users to easily move their activations between machines while still stopping multi seat users from buying one license and installing it on multiple machines.
It’s recently come to light though various topics in the User to User forums that the CS3 activation system, while still allowing for deactivation, has a hard limit of 20 activation/deactivation cycles. The fact that it’s taken a year to be exposed tells me that there’s not all that many people testing the limit of the system, but it’s still important for users to be aware that it exists. The last thing you want to do is deactivate your office machine and find out that you’ve hit that limit when you get to a client’s office when trying to activate your laptop.
Should you get bitten by this you can call Adobe and get 5 more activations but that’s not always practical. So, if you’re among those juggling more than two machines with one license please keep careful tabs on that count.
This article was last modified on December 19, 2021
This article was first published on May 23, 2008
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