Hi Judy

Can you tell me if you have been through the process in the tech note you
directed me to?

I just had a couple of interesting experiences with Adobe activation support
and I am curious about your experiences. I just upgraded one of my computers to
Leopard and it toasted my activation and then I began receiving the activation
error again while trying to get it to re-activate.

In the screen that the tech note refers to, it provides localised phone
numbers for users to call. In Australia one of the numbers is disconnected and
the other transfers to the standard Adobe Activation system...

When I did get a person to talk to the first time, I was told that FreeHand is
not supported under Leopard and therefore they did not have to help me activate
it. I questioned this and was then put on hold and then hung up on.

The next time I called the person I spoke to had no knowledge of the tech note
you refer to, after I gave her the serial number the software mysteriously
activated without any problem the next time I was asked to try... this is
despite repeated attempts over a number of days testing.

I don't want to get into conspiracy theories or anything, however it would
appear that Adobe is actively trying to make the software difficult to activate
in order to drive users to Illustrator instead and effectively terminate the
license by default.

If anyone else runs into this problem I would suggest that they say they are
running OS X 10.3 or 10.4 regardless of what version they happen to be using.
Adobe are trying to use OS X 10.5 as a way to not have to continue providing
activation support which by default renders your software license null if you
can't activate it under the newer OS's.

They could solve this by not forcing us to activate, however then users would
not be forced to buy Illustrator when things don't work.

Another possibility is that internally Adobe will simply turn off activation
(quietly) and force people to call and go through an agonising phone call with
activation support etc. This will also have the net effect of making your
licence unusable and drive people to cross-grade to Illustrator and spend more
$$$.

Adobe should really provide us with an alternative to activation but being the
type of company they are, Im sure this will be the last option they offer
unless it becomes a legal dispute.

Just in case they terminate this thread Im going to mirror it elsewhere just
to be sure they can't brush FreeHand users under the carpet through this
interesting and devious method of not honouring the original licenses.

Let me know if you can add any other info.

Cheers