Your a complete moron.

Pay up for your nice "new" version, and enjoy the feeling you get when more new protections come out, and your nice "new", activly developed software cant handle it. I bet you will be really happy then! But dont worry, i'm sure given 9 months that they would have completely re-written the software!

Do you work for Alcohol? I bet your the only one there!

Now we get into the difference between a beta and an RC, an RC more or less is the complete product and is supposed to be stable enough for release, the problem here is the developers who are behind the ball making it difficult for Microsoft to be able to test. Bear in mind you will never ever get a 100% perfectly developed application, if you did windows update wouldn't exist, and developers wouldn't be patching their application fixing little things as the crop up because of all the different machines out their. A release candidate is just that something that they feel can be released at anytime, Windows 64 bit for Server 2003w/sp1 and Windows XP Pro 64 bit are basically ready for release and can be anytime now.

So what are you saying about those that have already released 64bit compatible applications and games?

ok, but I am very happy with this version. Ok,it cannot averything burn but I think that it will be more difficult to make a copy or an image from any software.
The copy protection are more cleverely and I'm sure that Starforce 3 was not the ending of VERY hard copy protections. It's only the beginning.
I think that we can be happy now that the most copy protection are "still" so easy to burn. Sure they are very hard to crack but when you compare Starforce and SafeDisc you will see a big difference.
However it's a big progress for alcohol and the next versions that alcohol now support DVDs. It hasn't been developed yet but its better than nothing. And Securom an SafeDisc on DVD now supporting...

But actually I wanted to know what other one, indeed when the next version will be released. I know that this question perhaps is impudent but I only want to know if we must wait another year or if you say answer when there is something new about the next version....
Do you conceal the next version like this version and do you give no information about an update or will you now be openly to this thing????

Whatever I will ever be a customer of you and I know (and hope) that you are always do your best and make great work

Gon on like this because you are on the correct way

Who would have?
You said no one is developing it.

lmao @ that reply anyway its pretty obvious that as with clonecd the protections are getting a lot harder therefor its taking longer to release good updates..fact of life
Although i do think online activation is not the way and wonder how much time was wasted on this.........

I think it's great that some software companies develop for pre release OSs. I respect them for their decision to do this and assume that they have the budget and personnel available.
I also respect the decision that others make, to wait till things are more concrete and there is a real need for the product.
Like enough consumers to sell it to.
I assume that most of these people will not be offering their goods for the 64bit windows as a free upgrade.
For those who do give a free upgrade I commend them, but fear that most will make you buy it if you upgrade your OS.
I know I have purchased Nero several times now as a number of their upgrades were not free.

I understand the frustration of some people who love this program and can't wait for the next version, but i also believe that those who vent by making childish comments do not help at all.

The forum is a wonderful place to ask questions and even air complaints, but only in a non sarcastic adult manner.
I really enjoy reading the posts that ask good pertinent questions and point out problems and just wish I didn't have to wade through the minority posters who do not really add to the discussion.
There have been some good points made about the difference between RC and Beta software and those kinds of things help, but just complaining and being a wise arse does nothing to help matters.
I mostly read on this board because I have so much to learn and feel this is one of the best forums i visit.
The vast majority of the members here are just plain helpful.
I very rarely have to ask a question because most of my questions have already been answered in here somewhere.

I too have been waiting and waiting and waiting for this software to improve and I have been a little upset by having to resort to other programs to accomplish my goals, but I just try to keep my disappointment in check.

Maybe some suggestions for the alcohol team would be more helpful, like, more beta testers, dropping testers who do not report in on a regular basis, develop a public beta program if there isn't one. You can find some real jewels by offering time expiring public betas.
If they are not open to suggestions, maybe we should look at more responsive companies.
VSO for example seems to be another good company with some great software.
I'm not trying to say anything bad about anyone here, just attempting to move this discussion in a more positive direction and some here have raised very good points.

By the way, I agree about the on line activation problem. This is very unfair to the consumer and has made me re-think who I buy from as a re-load is only possible as long as that company is in business and could force legal software users to look for illegal means to activate their program in the event the company goes out of business.

A good example being 321 studio.

A friend of mine is planning on buying Alcohol120%, but he has no internet connection at home and he doesn't want it either (yes such people still exists ).
Does this mean he can't buy Alcohol120%?

Also he wants to know if there will be any regular updates.
He doesn't want to buy a program that won't be updated for 6 months (or more).

He already has some StarForce 3 and Tagès protected games, which he hopes can be copied with a new release .................... even if they ain't used as much as SafeDisc & SecuROM there are games released with these protecions and they're released more and more.


I'm thinking of telling my friend not to purchase Alcohol120% .................... because I don't think the development of Alcohol120% will give my friend what he wants.

Could I be wrong?

I think it might be best to ask this in their official forum. I am not sure if they offer an alternate activation method. Although the boxed version may not require this.

I have no idea about this. I believe that adding DVD DPM took a long time to implement, but hopefully updates will be more frequent now. I have no proof though.

With the current version 1.95.2722, I don't think StarForce3 and Tagès are copiable. I haven't tested this myself though.

I think the future of Alcohol is still very strong and I believe the dev team is definitely planning to tackle these protections. As to when this happens, who knows?

@ Namoh

I don't think that I would reccommend your friend buying in to this software.

I think KitnaIsntHappy is kind of right with his answer, but I propose a compromise...

I would tell your friend to wait and see what the next version of Alcohol is like. Basically if all they do is 3 bugfixes (Product Activation, the Explorer right click bug, and blacklisting for the Virtual drive) and no new protection updates, then I would not bother.

I really beleve that this software is all but dead, and is being kept alive by a skeleton staff hoping to attract new customers, and not bothering about potentially ripping them off. Let the Alcohol staff prove me wrong by releasing a NEW version which reflects 10+ months of development, then I would be more than happy to do lots of free marketing for them.

What Explorer right click bug? The only thing I can find on the net about a right click bug for the latest alcohol, was a site talking about a bad crack that caused explorer to crash while right clicking.

Ahhh, naughty people out there! lol

I wondered why I couldnt make mine do it. Just put it down to knowing how to install Windows properly! lol

Yeah

The recording graph at the end still doesn't show 12X or 16X speeds when burning DVDs. How is it possible to miss such a huge BUG? It is a shame that this great software has such a obvious flaw... How hard could it be to fix this since the previous release?

If your friend contacts Alcohol there is a way to get registered with no Internet connection. You do need to contact them though. Maybe you would be kind enough to let him/her use your internet account to at least go to the forum and post about this?

And you can't contact them by phone?

This information is from their website.

By the way Server 2003 w/sp1 64bit and Windows XP Pro 64 bit are rtm due out next month, out time to get on it.

I am sorry but wasting time for online activation is really nonsense. The beastard will be cracked in upcoming weeks. So the amount of time taken to develop it is gone for nothing. I mean come on Look at Symantec and Windows online activation...how much good did it do them?

Oh and before I get attacked for talking about cracks of Alcohol 120%, well then you might look at yourself. The main reason for this software is to bypass other protections so "doctor heal thyself". I don't care if you argue that the bypass of game protections is for the games you own. WEll the same can be argued that the bypass of online activation is for the software you own...you allready activated it once but you had to reinstall your PC and whatnot and you don't want the alc team to spy on how many times you have acitvated your software. For example GhostSurf only allows a n number of activations before your code is blacklisted. But what if you installed ghostsurf on your "experimental" build of windows? And each time a new version of windows comes out you have to rebuild the system?

The gist of the story is: Spending any amount of time in order to improve software authentification is pointless. Especially if it's done by people who's job is to circumvent that type of a deal. (Sd 2/3/4/ copy etc). It's like hackers protecting their code from being hacked.
I am not saying that I am a cracker etc, I am just saying that it's a pointless wasted time. The previous technique was good enough.

"...The bastard will be cracked in upcoming weeks..."

It was available within a couple of HOURS of the official release...complete
with reg hack and patch to activate to full version...so yeah, I guess more
that five minutes spent developing the on-line activation was probably five
minutes wasted. Shame though...I thought the previous Alcohol was okay.
Only burn DVDs these days...DVDDecrypter (free) DVD2One & CopyToDvd
(cheap, brilliant and updated more regularly than a...regularly updated thing!)

The main reason is to make personal backups, not bypass protections.

Yeah but in order for the personal backups to work one must bypass protections. So all things being equal they are one of the same.

One does not bypass any protections using Alcohol. If their hardware permits they replicate the protection, if the replication is not 100% Emulation via the application makes up the difference. Bypassing is what crackers do.
Exactly. This is what the Alcohol team have said their application is for. To say things defamatory of this statement is just plain ignorant.(no pun)
Isnt that a contradiction in terms? Hackers use others code to their advantage they find faults and exploit them. Crackers reverse engineer and modify other peoples codes for exploitation.

Sure, i agree Activation is a pain in the arse, but can you really blame them that much for trying to stop their product being used in an illegal way?

[on-quote]
No, you can't blame them for trying to stop illegal copies, but you can blame them for wasting money and/or time on such an useless protection scheme that would be better spent on software development.

[off-quote]
Quality and progression sells, not copyprotection. Maybe even sex sells, but honestly, I don't want to see anyone from Alcohol-Soft's staff naked.

Maybe someday people will understand that activations are the worst and user unfriendliest kind of protection when they have to activate every little wannabe application all through the night (at least when setting up your computer).

Activations are the first step to "Pay-per-use" and that can't be a worthy goal for a paying customer. Same goes for DRM.

But I know... Nobody listens and noone cares... Go George Walker Go!

I have no idea about the internal workings of Alcohol or how long it would take to implement such a feature, but if you didn't notice there are other features in that Changelog. DVD DPM might be a very hard thing to implement, and that could've taken up the thick end of the time implementing it. This may apply to any of the other updates.