Free CE 9 Pro?

[pelajhia]

I just got this note from crystal decisions about getting CE 9 Professional for free since I've already got CR9 Advanced....has anyone looked at this offer? It does not appear to be a trial-version, just limited in number of users.
Perhaps to get people hooked before microsoft comes out with their reporting tool.
Am I being naive?
Does anyone know if it is possible to add user licenses to this 5-user license?

Here is the link:

http://www.crystaldecisions.com/x-jump/cr9_03/default.asp

What am I missing? THanks!

 

[rhinok]

According to the fine print:

"You cannot deploy the promotional Crystal Enterprise 9 Professional five-named-user licenses on any existing Crystal Enterprise 9 deployment or stack promotional licenses to increase the number of named licenses. This promotional offer is restricted to a single standalone deployment of five-named-user licenses."

You should be able to add additional licenses that you purchase after the you've received and registered the free software. All in all, this is a pretty good deal. You get a fully functional version of CE instead of the worthless standard edition. What you don't get for free (at least from what I'ved read) is Crystal Care Technical Support or Maintenence (the ability to upgrade to the next version for 'free').

In the past Crystal has given away Seagate Info and Crystal Enterprise 8 Standard. I don't think has much to do with Microsoft. Its more likely due to the fact that they're pushing Crystal Reports 9 instead of Crystal 8.5 and 8, which included Crystal Enterprise 8 Standard (not compatible with CR 9).

As for getting 'hooked', I've seen many posts on these forums from individuals who've used their free-version of Enterprise in production environments and then freak out over the cost of upgrades, additional licenses, tech support and maintenance. Even though this is a fully functional software, it is still intended to be used for evaluation purposes only.

 

[Naith]

Where are you from, pelajhia? Because that offer is for North American clients only. Europe kind of learned their lesson from doing this with Seagate Info 7, which retained a lot more functionality of the end product than CE Standard.

 

[pelajhia]

Grandma was from Ukraine, thus the name, if that's what you mean. I'm just from little ol'Dallas.

 

[icytrue]

5 named licences means exactly that - only those specific five people can view use the system. If that meets your needs (and you are in North America) then this is a great offer, otherwise it is a bit of a tease.

Icytrue

icytrue@hotmail.com

 

[twoeyes]

Hi.

We're running the "free" CE 8.0 that came with CR 8.5 - for the most part it meets our needs very well. I'm wondering if it's time to upgrade to CR9.0 though. We had considered upgrading earlier, but the bundled CE9 Standard was too crippled. Now, however, we want to schedule print outs of reports, which looks like it's out-of-the-box in CE 8.5+, plus this new offer sounds pretty good.

Does this promotional versoin of CE Pro offer everything that the bundled CE 8 included? The Cache server, scheduling, etc.?

5 named users sounds reasonable, considering we make do with Admin/Guest right now!

BTW, any suggestions on how to schedule printing of reports with CR8.5/CE8.0?

----------------------------------------
Check out my irrelevant personal website:

http://www.lc.yi.org