I personally have no problems with protection schemes. I have dongles installed on my systems, I have Challenge Code protected software, etc. Everything works ok and gives me no problem. Piracy on the contrary is a real problem not just for companies but for users too (we pay for piracy, because if companies don't sell many, they have to sell pricey). Challenge Code is an effective way to keep piracy under control. It will never stop professional pirates (nothing will: as technology progresses, piracy does too), but it will effectively stop the friend-to-friend copies of "normal" people who doesn't know how to crack a program but has friends "willing to share". So if a company needs Challenge Code to stay in business, I'll support it. At the same time, the company has to support me, by not placing obstacles to my computer use. This means that there must always be a person available to provide unlock codes. And it also means that there must be a will to understand that several users do intensively use their tools and anyone who uses Windows (especially sick OSs like the Millennium I am using on this machine) knows that there CAN indeed be the need to make several scratch installations per year to keep a system efficient, fast, and clean. My support for Challenge Code would be even more convinced if there was no restrictive "flag" implied. Five flags seem too little to me. I know flags are somewhat necessary to avoid people abusing or "going around" the obstacle, but at the same time, as a WinME user, I had one time so many bad problems with drivers that I had to re-format C drive some... I don't know, maybe 5 or 6 times in a week. That was for sure a borderline (limit) situation, but sometimes it can happen. As can happen that, like now, I am running this computer it's almost an year now without C drive reformats. Who can predict for sure? Impossible. Actually, the so-much blamed and criticized initiative of placing serial numbers into Intel processors, would have solved the problem. If at registration time people gives the serial number of processor, then the software during installation checks that the unlock code is matching with processor SN, this would make flags obsolete. A given serial number will work ONLY with that given processor. But I am going too far now :-) In conclusion I will support Challenge Code without a problem, but the company must be ready to support my installation needs when I have them. This too, like everything in commerce, is a give and take situation. If it can make both happy, then there's no problem - at least not for single honest users like I am sure most of us are, who have no habit to make pirates copies out of their software. We must remember that the copy protection of a software we own, does not only protect the company, it protects us too, in the end. It means no competition (in case we're in business) coming from people who didn't pay for the software and can invest that money in something else. It means also lower prices, more upgrades, more assistance, more committment form the company, and ultimately, the survival of the product itself.