Should I upgrade to 12? "No Charge UG for Students"

[djmichaelwenz]

Hi, I was completely against upgrading to PT12 because of the new License confusion and I do not want to pay a monthly subscription ever. Now I see that my PT 10 & 11 purchase has a FREE Pro Tools 12 No Charge UG for Students listed.

I am downloading the installer now.

My question is this..... If I install PT12 at some point will my Pro Tools STOP working????????? I am under the impression that I may have a Perpetual License and the support or updates will end at some point? Honestly PT11 is Ok and doing what I want. I am in fear that if I upgrade to PT12 and remove PT11 I will be forced into a subscription and that is something I do not want. I am sure this has been asked a bunch before but if you could help me out I would appreciate it!

[mesaone]

Perpetual licenses are never turned into subscription licenses. Not for academic licenses, not for non-academic licenses. Perpetual licensing means you own the license forever.

[djmichaelwenz]

Thanks, I am not sure if I have a perpetual account? I purchased PT10 on January 25th 2012 from Studica when I was a student. I am no longer a student. I guess all this is confusing.... I was under the impression that at some point in time I will not be able to upgrade PT 12. So say I am on 12.4 and my 4 year period ends, then I won't be able to upgrade to say 12.7???


Thanks again for your response!

[mesaone]

Your license is perpetual.

If you want to continue receiving feature updates, you'll need to get on a support plan (not the same thing as a subscription) before your 4-year EDU plan is up.

http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/e...-Licensing-FAQ

[nigelpry]

Originally Posted by mesaone

Your license is perpetual.

If you want to continue receiving feature updates, you'll need to get on a support plan (not the same thing as a subscription) before your 4-year EDU plan is up.

http://avid.force.com/pkb/articles/e...-Licensing-FAQ

Unfortunately it's not quite as simple and clear cut as your comment would suggest, mesaone .... not yet, at least.

In response to this very question, and especially in respect of the fact that my four years does not run out until after the deadline date for signing up to a support plan, I initially received a reply from Avid that I had a simple choice to make ....

1) Yes I could continue to get free upgrades until my four years were up, and not sign up to a support by end of 2015 .... but unfortunately, at the end of the four years my perpetual license would then be forever frozen at it's current version as at the end of the four year period,

or,

2) If I want to be able to upgrade my license into the future, I could choose to sign up to acsupport plan, but this would have to be by the end of 2015, even though that is before my four years are up.

As it seems a oretty unsatisfactory set of choices, Jeffro has started a support case on my behalf to look into this further, along a couple of other related issues.

To me, the obvious answer would be that I (and others in the same position of course) should not have to sign up to a support plan until the four years are up.

I have also suggested an alternative .... if there is some issue that people absolutely MUST sign up by the end of 2015, then their support plan expiry date should be set to coincide with the end date of their four years of free upgrades.

So, at the moment, it's a case of watch this space until Jeffro comes back with a definitive answer.

PS .... just as a matter of note .....

With Media Composer, when version 8 was released last year, I WAS given a support plan as part of my four years of free upgrades, unlike Pro Tools, where we got the upgrade license and links in our accounts, but no support plan. But as I've mentioned in another thread, it was clear in the webinar that this subtlety was completely lost on Tim, Tom and Tony, as they asserted twice that all owners of Pro Tools 12 ARE on support plans, PERIOD.

The support plan was only for a year, and ran out earlier this month while I was on holiday. It did not automatically renew, but I contacted Media Composer Customer Support when I got back and a new Support Plan was in place the next day. I'm happy with how quickly and effectively they dealt with the case, and the communications were good too.

With Sibelius, I had a painless free student upgrade from 7 to 7.5, but people have been waiting for months to get their free upgrades to version 8.

However, I'm not using it much at the moment, so while I was aware that 8 was out, and that I'd not got the upgrade automatically, or any communication from Avid about it, I didn't bother chasing it up, other than to add my name into a thread in the Sibelius forum asking when the upgrades would be coming.

So while chasing up the Media Composer upgrade I thought I'd look into the situation with Sibelius ... within a few hours of posting again on the forum I had contact from Sibelius Customer Support saying they were looking into it, and the next day my Sibelius 8 was in my account.

It's probably worth noting, though I'm not sure how relevant it is, that neither Media Composer nor Sibelius are iLok protected. It does make me wonder whether some of the licensing problems we have with Pro Tools updates is about management and control of the many thousands of iLok licenses that have to be generated, swopped etc. Just a thought.

Finally, it is refreshing to see that with Media Composer and Sibelius, Avid seems to have responsive Customer Support in place. With Pro Tools, we seem to only have Jeffro visible, who is having to spread himself thinly while juggling many balls to try to address the many issues people are having.

I'm sure everyone here admires the way he is trying to get things resolved. I just wish that Avid had sufficient respect for us (Pro Tools users) and Jeffro to provide him with the extra bodies he needs to help get us support in a timely fashion.

I'm guessing that Pro Tools support (particularly here on the forum) is currently seen as such a poisioned chalice that there are not many volunteers to come on board to help Jeffro out ;-)

[nigelpry]

PPS .... I forgot to say ...

With the free upgrade to Sibelius 8 I also get a support plan.

So it is only people with student licenses on the four years of free upgrades deal bought originally during the PT9/10 period prior to PT11 beng announced that, when they upgrade to 12 ...

a) Have a Pro Tools 12 license, or if they upgraded early enough, have a 10/11/12 bundle,

and

b) Do not have a support plan.

I say this because I read in another thread that the other group of people with PT12 who did not automatically get a support plan were those who bought a new HDX/HDN system, which came with the software but not a support plan, have now been given a support plan.

I have no idea, but I'm curious about, what has been done for any of those people who shelled out an extra $599 to get a support plan only to later discover that those eho didn,t buy it have been given it for free. Does anyone know? I've not seen anything said about it here. Maybe they've had their support plan expiry dates extended by a suitable amount to compensate them?