Prolonged trial registration keys were sent to everyone

Hello,

A prolonged trial registration keys were sent to every Mac customer registered with Parallels. If you haven't received your key for some reason you may get the prolonged key at http://www.parallels.com/en/account

 

Thank you very much, the follow up is really great

 

Kudos! And thanks. Timely, excellent support.

 

Thanks, great follow-up. Any estimates for the release candidate build yet?

 

yannis,
Don't rush the release build! Parallels has been making steady progress releasing timely betas, which for most people are perfectly usable. If they 'rushed' final out the door and it wasn't complete or it contained bugs, what does that gain us? Nothing. (But, it would tarnish Parallels' reputation.)

So, sit back and enjoy. or wait for the final version knowing that it'll be the best product it can be.

-Rick

 

Mine doesn't work for some reason...

The new beta registration key i was sent is not accepted by Parallels 2.1 b6. When I select Help > Activate Product, enter the code in the Activation Key text box, and press Activate, Parallels says "This activation key seems to be invalid!".

Am I doing something wrong?

 

My email had a ':' immediately at the end of the key... when I removed it, re-activiation worked. You may want to check that...

 

Awesome Parallels! That must have been quite a task to generate 100,000 new keys and email them all out. No wonder you guys were quiet for a few days!

Thanks

 

I'm getting the same thing as monoclast. I even checked for updates to see if I had to update first.

All right, problem solved. I mistook a capital "I" as a number 1. Check yours out again monoclast.

 

"It's the alphanumerics, stupid"...

Dear Parallels engineers,

I have a request for you:

The last part of my registration code is VG3O4, and I mistakenly thought that the O was a zero. It wasn't.

Please avoid giving us registration numbers with the letter "O" and the letter "I". It's way too easy to mistake the letter O for the number 0 and the letter I for the number 1 in registration code emails!

 

Seriously... do you whine about EVERYthing in your life? In the grand scheme of things.... this is really, really little.

I am amazed at the constant pissing, moaning and pontificating from users using BETA (yes, beta, you know... not complete yet?) software that is doing something very, very cool.

Parallels... great job getting this far. Keep doing what you do and fixing the important stuff!

Nick Collision

 

Here is a better suggestion: Just cut and paste the key from the email into the activation and don't worry about what characters they use!!!

 

Thanks guys!

 

This is BETA and they are asking for suggestions. Why are you whining so much over that?

 

Command-C Command-V

Copy and Paste, for goodness sake.

 

I'm surprised someone wanted to TYPE over the whole thing, indeed. Many serial numbers in other products have O / 0 / I / 1 in the serials and it's not something Parallels needs to avoid. I would suggest that the e-mail say something along the line of 'use copy-and-paste', though.

 

Yikes. Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed today... lighten up, my friend - you'll live longer.

It's simply a feature request. I never said what you imply - that they aren't doing a terrific job. In fact, I happen to like the product so much that I purchased it a few beta versions back.

Anyhow, I seriously doubt the format of the reg codes they use have anything to do with whether their software is at beta. In fact, I'm willing to bet they use this format for all products, not just the Mac product. It simply makes good sense to avoid the letters O and I in registration codes. Ask any usability guru and they will tell you the same. The more confusion you help avoid the better the overal experience is. Period. Anyhow, it's not up to you or I to decide what priority feature requests get - it's up to Parallels. And I am quite confident they will assign a suitable priority to this (as you claim, "unimportant") feature request.

Parallels team: For the record, I'll tell you what you surely already know by my sending you my hard-earned cash: You are doing a great job with this product, and I am loving being able to use it every day. I use Windows software for work, and I've gotten rid of my PC now and am using Parallels full time as a replacement, thanks to your hard work. I look forward to every new release, even though I am now having zero problems with the Mac beta!

 

Copy and paste, in most situations, is a perfectly-acceptable alternative. It doesn't solve the real problem (that the letters look very similar to corresponding numbers), but at least gets the product registered. I understand that copy and paste is a great alternative for the majority of folks on this support forum; but it's not an option for some of us.

In my case, copy and paste simply does not work. I have Parallels running on a headless (no monitor, keyboard, or mouse attached) Mac mini that sits in my closet. I access the mini via VNC. Unfortunately, OSXvnc server and COTvnc do not reliably support copy and paste. So that's out for me. I had to type the number in manually.

Besides, ask any usability expert and they will agree: it's simply better to avoid using the letters O and I in registration codes. And many companies do. Why is it that so many of you are so ready and willing to completely discount that fact? What possible reason could you have to want registration codes that are more confusing than less? Seemingly insignificant usability issues such as these do deserve attention, no matter how trivial you think they are. Surely you must realize that it's attention to the small details like this that set Macs apart from other alternatives. Please don't discourage Parallels from paying attention to the small things. Let Parallels decide the weight and priority for themselves! So far they have proven very able to do that on their own!

 

Interesting. I originally registered with one mail address, then changed my email address via the web interface. I changed my email address sometime in the last 1-2 weeks. The prolonged key was sent to the original email address I signed up with, not the new one.

 

Thanks for the quick support, Parallels Team! This sort of response has won you a new Mac customer. I received my key last night and independently figured that the extra character in the email didn't belong. Beta5 is working great, will install beta6 this weekend when I have more time to play with the network settings.