i installed the software and then entered the given serial number.

if there is more to it than that Smithmicro did not make me aware of it.

i met there system requirements.

Maybe they shipped the a dvd that didn't match the serial number, i don't know.

but they didn't seem to care that they had sent me a product that i paid for and did not work.

 and i looked at downloading a service pack, but they wanted a credit card number to be able to download it.

What possible sense could it make to buy, software that doesn't work and then be asked to provide a credit card to update it so it works.