"I'm planning on purchasing Voltaic for work"
You pay peanuts.... you get monkeys!

Can the monkey do the job without kvetching at me regarding activation codes? Do I need to babysit it and lead it by the hand to use it on my production machine AND my field laptop?

Maybe it's monkey-business compared to Cineform, but I DO NOT LIKE jumping through hoops.

You pays your money you take your choice.
I have found the Cineform workflow and speed to be second to none.
Also their customer service is excellent compared to many other companies I can compare them with.
They will sort you out... that Im sure... but all this "moaning" and perceived "aggressive" comments over activation is not helping your case much is it??

To be frank... if you were my customer I would give you your money back and tell you to go and sling you hook.
Piracy, language and all that!

I would highly recommend taking a backup of your OS drive. I use Acronis True Image to do so. I have a clean install of Vista x64 with all my tools installed and activated. It's only about 7GB and I have archived it off to a dual layer DVD.

Then if there are any untoward issues - be they virii, hard disk issues, upgrades to Windows 7 - I simply restore back to my safe back-up if I need to.

We can gripe all day about activation but the point is that it is a necessary evil and it's hardly as if CineForm are the only software publisher with an activation policy. Having an OS partition backup is just common sense 101. In a total worst case scenario, I can be back up and running in less than 20 minutes.

Just a heads up that I had issues with Acronis in Windows 7 ... since Windows 7 now has it's own disk imaging capabilty I just use that.

I second the good words about CineForm's support. Aside from their quick response to email requests, they are very active on this forum. David Newman spends a huge amount of time responding to questions and problems. I don't know of any other software company that is as dedicated to support.

Thanks Jim, your post is a great way to end this thread, which has gone as far as it needs to go. Much appreciated,