🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sun, 16 Feb 2003 16:16:26 -0500, "Todd" <todd44@quest.net> wrote:

>BY MIKE WENDLAND
>FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
>
>You'd think that if anyone would be able to breeze through income tax
>preparation software, it would be George Gregory and his wife, Lorraine.
>
>He's a Birmingham tax attorney. She works for the Internal Revenue Service
>in Detroit. But together, they count last weekend as lost after a
>frustrating encounter with the popular TurboTax program from Intuit and its
>new anti-piracy policies.
>
>"I sympathize with their desire to stop piracy," said George Gregory. "But
>in trying to do so, they have sure frustrated this legitimate customer."
>
>While Intuit is generating plenty of controversy over the policy, it's an
>issue software users are going to encounter more and more over the next year
>as other companies begin trying to control software piracy. In the United
>States, the industry says piracy accounts for 25 to 50 percent of the
>software in use.
>
>Intuit's new anti-piracy features aren't new. Microsoft has been doing the
>same thing with its Windows and Office products since 2001.
>
>The TurboTax CD for PCs has a software key code, like Windows XP and other
>products, that links each copy of the program to the PC where it was
>originally installed. The Macintosh version of TurboTax doesn't have such
>requirements.

The difference is that MS was up front about it, developed it
themselves and planned to support it. Intuit snuck it in, bought
something they didn't technically understand, and didn't prepare to
support it. A format cleans out the XP activation but not so for
Intuit.

>
>To make sure you don't give the program to all your friends, a feature
>called C-Dilla is installed with TurboTax on your hard drive. Whenever you
>run TurboTax, C-Dilla checks the activation code on the PC, making sure the
>full program is running on the one computer that was authorized.
>
>Users around the country have flooded chat rooms with howls of protest and
>columnists like me have called it spyware. Technically, because it records
>no personal information and doesn't report anything back to Intuit, it isn't
>really spying on users.
>
>But it sure can inconvenience them. Which takes us back to the Gregorys.
>
>They bought the $79 deluxe version last week, which can be installed on
>multiple computers, although C-Dilla makes sure only the one authorized
>computer can print out forms or file a return.
>
>George Gregory spent much of last Saturday in his Birmingham law offices,
>meticulously entering in 1099 forms and his business income. He saved the
>data on a floppy disk and brought it to his Troy home, where he would enter
>in the personal expenses from the records kept there on his home PC.
>
>"I planned to put the home information in and then take it back to the
>office, where I'd print it out," he said.
>
>What he found instead was that because the full program was activated on his
>work PC, he could only install a so-called trial version on his home
>machine. But he couldn't get the trial version to import all the data on the
>floppy -- even though it was the same return he was trying to prepare. He
>said he spent much of Sunday and Monday trying to get help from Intuit
>customer service online and over the phone.
>
>"They told me to buy another copy of the program," he said. "That's just
>silly. They've made it too much of a hassle."
>
>Intuit spokesman Scott Gulbransen told me Gregory should be able to do what
>he wants and offered to personally help him straighten out the confusion.
>But the piracy problems have forced Intuit and other software companies to
>institute the new activation procedures.
>
>
>See why companies like Intuit can no longer ignore the issues?
>turbo tax
>
>