Pre-sales question regarding Curvemeister and demo

[mikemeister_admin]

I have a pre-sales question about Curvemeister, and the demo version. 

On one hand, it sounds like a terrific product, and one I'll be interested in buying.  On the other hand, years of sometimes bitter computing experience have taught me to be wary of new installs on my computer.

This thread:

http://www.curvemeister.com/forum/index.php?topic=1085.0

reports problems with CS3 crashes using the demo.  Have these been resolved?

Also, the demo puts a watermark on photos.  I understand why, and have no objections to authors who want to protect their work.  But once I buy my own copy and (I presume) enter serial # information, will the watermark go away?  Have there been any problems with demo versions that refused to stop being demos after they were paid for?

I don't want to sound negative.  Curvemeister really does sound great.  But I have learned the hard way to ask these questions.

Thanks.

[derekfountain]

reports problems with CS3 crashes using the demo.  Have these been resolved?

Also, the demo puts a watermark on photos.  I understand why, and have no objections to authors who want to protect their work.  But once I buy my own copy and (I presume) enter serial # information, will the watermark go away?  Have there been any problems with demo versions that refused to stop being demos after they were paid for?

CS3 is now pretty stable. No guarantees I suppose, but if you make it crash Mike will be very interested. I don't know if the demo is based on the very latest CM3 code - Mike is the only one who can answer that - but you're unlikely to have any problems with it.

The demo's watermark is written permanently onto the image, so any work you do with the demo will need to be repeated with the original copy of the image when you have the full version of the software.

You needn't be afraid of installing CM3 or the demo. I fully appreciate the mess that botched installs can produce and the associated nervousness it brings on. I suffer from that myself. But CM3 is a fairly simple program that doesn't embed itself into the operating system. Even if the installer does somehow go wrong it'd be easy to put right.

The solution to new install/software testing nervousness, BTW, is having a virtual test machine in Vmware (or similar). Power it up, install the software and try it out, then when you're done you hit "revert to snapshot." Pretty much everything I install these days goes into a Vmware based machine for a tryout first.

[mikemeister_admin]

That's what I needed to know.  Thanks!  I'll probably give it a go this weekend. 

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Derek's responded very well to this.  I would add that the particular crash you refer to has indeed been fixed.