Hello Parallels users. I decided to start this thread because of the audacity of Parallels to charge $7 to allow you to re-download your digital purchase for 2-yrs. It's nearly enough to make me switch back to Fusion for my VM needs. The ability to re-download your purchased application should be touted as a benefit to encourage Digital Download. (thus saving the company money on retail packaging etc.) This fair use of DRM technology is what has made every good Digital Download store (Steam, Mac App Store, Amazon kindle book store, iBooks, etc..) successful. Lets look at the sales pitch for the "Extended Download Service". "Simply purchase EDS as part of your order. We’ll automatically store on our server a back-up copy of the software that you purchased and downloaded for two (2) years from the date of purchase. System crash? Hard disk error? No Worries! You can re-download your files anytime during your extended protection period." There is no need, and I doubt Parallels actually does, store a "back-up copy" of the software on their server. The software is already on the server available to be downloaded for new purchases. All that needs to be saved is your license to use that software. $7 to store a few KB of data in a database they likely already maintain is a poor business model. I do understand that as new versions are released and the software progresses, these older versions are then taking up space and bandwidth on their servers that could be used for newer versions. It is unreasonable to expect that I will be able to re-download my Parallels Desktop 3 purchase in 10 years. I doubt that would be a very likely scenario anyway, however establishing a clear & reasonable software support timeline for the different Parallels products would allow consumers to purchase this software with confidance that they can log-in to their account and download their licensed software. With VMware I can log-in to my account and not only re-download my purchased software, but also retrieve my license key for that software. There is nothing to loose & nothing to backup, and there is NO additional cost for this benefit (to both the consumer and company). If you would like to voice your agreement and seek to change this ridiculous policy please petition via the poll on this thread.
http://kb.parallels.com/en/5802 And the latest version (7) is always available from the main site. There's absolutely no reason to pay for this service, although I think it's not provided by Parallels itself but Digital River, the intermediary that makes the sale. Also, I don't see why doesn't Parallels make the sell directly and uses a broker.
