I was preparing a review for another piece of software that I loved so much I had to buy it, roboform. But I have decided that I no longer like how they perform their upgrades. I have owned this software since about 2005 and have enjoyed updates for free since then, with very little problems. Was that part of my license? I am not sure but the free updates allowed me to keep myself and passwords secure while using the latest browsers, which are almost always more secure. Enter 2011, Roboform releases version 7 and sends an email saying it is released and that I can upgrade for a reduced rate, to which I say “nah, I cant afford it and version 7 doesn’t add enough functionality for me to actually start putting the money aside for it”. Ok, I was a bit put off having to pay for an upgrade for the first time ever, but I thought I would just be giving up the latest features which I would not use, so no biggee. Now, Firefox 4 is released, actually it has been out for a little while, so I waited until modt of my addons were compatible, especially Roboform, since it houses all of my passwords for almost all of my sites, and it seemed like it was. So I install Firefox 4 and Roboform has a little button instead of the toolbar, so now I start getting concerned, click the button and roboform wants to send me to a webpage with upgrade now links, so I send an email to Roboform, to which they reply with a canned answer “It is not compatible with Firefox 4 but you can very easily upgrade to version 7 for a reduced cost. Of course version 6 will still work in the old versions of Firefox”! Are you kidding me, that is bad business and it ticks me off a bit, I can understand wanting people to pay to upgrade, but to force them to upgrade if they want the latest most secure browser, PURE BS!! So now it is time to start looking at a new password manager…maybe http://keepass.info/ with a plugin for firefox which is still in the dev stages. I have not tested it to see how it does yet, but thanks to roboform’s crappy stinking support for their customers I need to do it!
(EDIT: Now to be fair and honest, late last night I received an email from roboform giving me a free license for either the desktop version or the everywhere version, which I chose everywhere version since I have 2 PCs with licenses for version 6 and the everywhere version works for multiple PCs and devices like IPhone etc as well as online, but I know they will hit me with a bill next year so I have a year to find a new password saving software, maybe lastpass or something like it. Looking at version 7 I like how it looks, but it still seems very much like it did before, so I still stand behind the impression I get that this was a ploy to raise some money from their users!! And it all seems a bit sketchy to me.)
Thanks for reading!