What do you call the software programs that are only usable within a trial period?

Often there are many software which we come across which are available for the download but they are not the full version things, but only the trial part of it. Such software are called trial software. The main and primary difference between Trial and full version software is that trail software allows you to use only particular and selected functionalities of the software while the full version software will allow you to use all the functionalities. Another difference is that trial software are intended for download and use and impress the user so much that he/she inclines to download the whole product later on and purchase it so as to buy it later on to use it fully. The trial software are free while the full version software are paid software.

Problems in using Trial Software

The main problems in using trial software is that we do not succeed to use the whole functionality and we know that this product will work quite nice for our use. The trial version software are not usable forever. Rather the makers of the trial versions intend to let the users use the benefit of the product either partially and forever or fully but for a very limited period of time, say 10 days or 15 days or a month.

Just because of the fact that we can use trial software not fully, users are inclined to download the pirated version of the software so as to use it as per their convenience and once they connect their computer to the Internet and it is very much possible that their computer might be detected and the manufacturers of the product might be tracked and disabled. There is even a big possibility that you might be jailed because this offense of yours will be considered a piece of theft and you will be considered as a cyber thief. Microsoft is already making rounds in the shops all around the famous cities of all the countries and when caught, they are fined for upto Rs. 1 million for every shop, which sells hardware. With this move by the software giant, the day is not far when other companies will make a similar move.

However, there is a way out through which you can use these trial version software for a much longer time than they are built for, almost forever. But you will need two things before you try to follow the steps in order to run you trial software for a longer period of time.

Since most of the companies who release some trial version of their software do not put any such term in their licensing agreements, which would deny you from running the trial version software on your computer, using the technique I am going to show. Hence, the technique becomes legal even when considering the license agreements. Also, it is not so tough that you will need to learn cryptic computer languages to get the work done. It is as simple as described below.

But before you start you must have the following

1. A Powerful computer with a processor, something like Intel Dual Core processor and nice amount of RAM, say 2 GB. While the trick will work well enough in 1 GB of RAM, 2 GB is better.
2. You must have a virtualization software such as VMware Workstation or VirtualBox.

We are considering VMware Workstation in our example.

Steps to run a trial version software permanently in Windows Operating Systems

1. First, install VMware Workstation on your computer.

2. Now using VMware Workstation, create a new Virtual machine and install Windows on that machine. You may chose to install any version of Windows according to your requirement. For example, let us say that you are trying to run Adobe Photoshop's trial version and you want to run it on Windows XP because that would give you better performance. So in this step, you would install Windows XP.

3. Now, after installing Windows XP virtual machine, first install VMware tools which will allow you to drag and drop files from the virtual machine to the real machine and vice versa. It will also enable networking features, which may be helpful.

4. On the status bar, you will see a networking icon. Double click to open the settings and choose not to use the networking feature when the guest operating system starts up.

5. Use the snapshot feature of the VMware Workstation and save the snapshot of the virtual machine in the current state. Remember not to delete this snapshot. This snapshot will help you to save time by simulating a complete reinstall within seconds instead of hours and save you from the tedious job of reinstalling an operating system repeatedly.

6. Now, install your trial version software. We consider Adobe Photoshop.

7. This software will run for 30 days with full functionality. Now, during this period you will create some images using that software which you need to save. Try to keep all those pictures in one organized folder, as that will keep things easy.

8. After the 30 days trial period, you will need to reinstall the virtual machine and you can lose your files you created in the virtual machine. Hence, you have to move those files from the virtual machine to the real machine. This is why in the above step, I preferred to keep all the files generated by your trial software in one place. This will make the movement of files from the virtual machine to the real machine much easy.

9. Now you need to reinstall the operating system on which to install the trial software. Since this is only a virtual machine, the procedure will be much simpler and hassle free and you will not have to reconfigure everything. The only things you will have to reconfigure or reinstall in the guest operating system will be your own preferred trial software, remember in our case Adobe Photoshop. But since we can save the trouble of reinstalling the virtual machine and make the process easier, we will do that. All we need to do is to use the snapshot manager again and revert to the snapshot, which you created back in the step 5. This way you will "reinstall" the virtual machine in exactly four clicks.

10. Now that your virtual machine in a state of a freshly installed operating system, you can reinstall your trial version of software, which will again work for thirty days. If you want to get your old files back, which you created the last time using the same trial version of the software, just copy and paste (drag and drop) from the real machine to the virtual machine. This step does what you have done back in the step number 6.

11. You have to just keep repeating step number 6 through 10 using VMware Workstation and that would let you use the trial version software for as long as you wish.

Happy. Aren't you?

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