Hi,
I have v10 Pro and 2x USB licenses. However, I want to upgrade to v12, but the system seems to insist that if I UPGRADE then I'll presumably LOSE the ability to install those previous versions on another computer.
I have 'a number' of computers - OK, 'a fair number' and many are very old - I even have a Win 98SE one that has the DOPUS 6 trial on it and it still works! As with that one, I don't want to upgrade many of these - just keep them as they are, but have the ability to reinstall if I need to. I also like to have USB sticks with Directory Opus on them lying around, so that when (it's always when) someone says, "Could you...?" then I can simply plug a USB stick in and their OS is now familiar territory.
The upgrade process revokes your old licence and issues you with a new one. That's to say, if you start out with a dual licence, and upgrade it, you still only have a dual licence.
However when you upgrade you are able to add additional licences at a discounted price, at the same time (up to 5 in total). Depending on how many licences you need this may be the most economical solution.
Alternatively you can use USB licences for the old computers, assuming you don't actually use them that often. And don't forget you get a free personal laptop licence (which you can in reality use on a desktop instead of a laptop).
I'm not sure how many versions it goes back but a licence file for Opus 12 will also work on Opus 11, for example, to allow people to drop down a version or to run a mixture of versions while migrating to a newer one.
Which old versions do you need to keep using? I can test for you if they will run on an Opus 12 licence code.
I've got Directory Opus v6 that was a demo WAY back on an old HP Win98 laptop - still works fine. I have v9 on a 2013 laptop and I'm using v10 now on this Win 7 machine.
I've got some old HP SFF boxes and I have a Win XP SP2 'System Builder' CD that used to be regarded as 'genuine' but then Micro$oft seems to have made it now 'not genuine' and so I can't upgrade it to SP3. Nice bloke that Bill Gates... Anyway, will v12 work with XP SP2 and all my other OSes as mentioned so far? I don't expect it to work with Win 3.1 and Win 95 (using Xtree on those ) - could I be wrong?
I've checked and licences for Opus 12 are accepted by Opus 9, 10 and 11 as well.
You'll still need a licence per machine, but if it's they're all Opus 12 licences they'll work with older versions.
No, almost nothing compiled with modern tools will run on Windows XP SP2, due to a bug in XP SP2 where the OS bluescreens if you run an exe where the manifest has values needed for newer OS. XP SP3 fixed that, but if you can't update to SP3 then you'll need to use older versions of a lot of software. (You'll probably need to use older versions of a lot of things anyway, since everyone is dropping XP support. Even Vista support is starting to go, I've noticed.) As far as Opus goes on XP SP2, Opus 9 and 10 should work, as they're old enough. I'm not sure if 11 would work on SP2 or not.
Opus 12 will run on XP SP3, although some UI features will be degraded due to the OS not supporting newer things, and time moving on. We aim to make 12 run on XP SP3, mainly for people who need it to work on someone else's machine, but we don't focus on making it a perfect experience on XP anymore.
) - could I be wrong?