Adobe Activation is smart!

I finally received my XPS M1330 laptop from Dell on Thursday of this week, and I rebuilt it while at work on Friday. This morning, I installed the last bit of software I use: Adobe Web Standard CS3. After installing it, I opened up Dreamweaver and prepared to activate the software, as I have done successfully a few times on my old laptop. (This software is also installed and activated on my desktop at work.) This time, though, it told me that I had no activations left!

Gasp! Horror!

Fortunately, it also told me that I could deactivate the software on another computer, and then activate on my new laptop. So I booted up my ThinkPad T43, launched Dreamweaver, and deactivated the software there. Then I was able to activate it on my M1330 without a problem.

So why am I so impressed by this whole process? Well, at first I assumed that I had a limited number of activations (say, 5) which I had blown through each time I rebuilt my old laptop, and it was simply bad timing that I ran out just as I tried to install it on my new laptop. But then I got to thinking… what if activation is smart enough to actually tie the software not to something at the OS level, but to the hardware itself? Then it would make perfect sense that I wasn’t able to activate it on my new laptop, because that would be the third unique piece of hardware on which this activation has been used. (Adobe typically allows you to install a copy of their software on up to two different computers.)

As it turns out, that’s exactly what Adobe does! So you can rebuild your computer ad nauseum, and activation should work each and every time. But install it on more than two unique hardware configurations, and that’s when you have to start deactivating in order to activate some more.

What’s the moral of the story? If you’re parting with a computer that had an activated copy of Adobe software on it, you should make sure you deactivate it first. Otherwise, you have to call up Adobe, and who wants to deal with an actual person?

I think this is the most elegant solution to software activation I’ve seen. It makes it very easy for people who follow the rules to use their software as they see fit (even freaks like me who frequently rebuild their systems).

Anyone know if Vista has a similar ‘deactivate’ feature?