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First off, I enjoy most of your comments here and on GOTD. I have often upvoted you on GOTD; did one just the other day where you had a -3 (I brought it up to -2). You very often bring up a good point but others (including possibly some vendors) will very easily downvote a comment. When I upvote you, it is because I believe you are right. There have been several other times where you were wrong, and more often than not, non-specific as to how you arrived at a decision of whether a software offer was any good. For Soft Xpansion’s Perfect PDF Editor, you are wrong; the software does install and activate and works. If it does not for some users, then it has to be something unique to them or their system.
I agree with you that Soft Xpansion should have a trial edition available, and they do have one on their page about the software. The trial is for the current version (10.x), not the same as the version we are being offered (9.x). I don’t know why you had trouble finding it. Soft Xpansion has trials for multiple programs of theirs, so I expect they have trials for all of them.
I have not tried their trial because the version 9.x offered here installed just fine for me. Most trial editions do not need any type of activation, but some do. If they do, it is usually an activation for a specified period, and it is probably the same type of activation the full purchase has. These types of trials/programs usually activate via the Internet, and if that fails, good companies offer an option to activate via e-mail (as Soft Xpansion does). Granted, if the user cannot communicate with the developer’s servers, then these types of Trials cannot be activated via the Internet, so the alternative is via e-mail. From what I can tell, that is how the Soft Xpansion trials work.
You stated that the current SoS offer is not the current version, and you also mention you would prefer the current version: “so long as we get current programs.” I like current programs as well, but I never complain about Franzis previous version offers, so I will not complain about a program that is 3 years old. I don’t mind if it is older, if it works reliably, and fills a need, and the licensing agreement is acceptable, and the price is right. Free on SoS is a good price.
>”… but not only am I a computer tech ( whatever that means to anyone – someone who is 20 minutes ahead of their customers in reading the owner’s manuals? ), ”
That sounds about right, but you must read too fast and miss some things. If you get it wrong, and then inform other users based on your incorrect assumption, you should not refer to yourself as a computer tech. If I have a group of computer techs working for me, and all can install the same program except for one of the computer techs, I am going to have my doubts on whether that person should be called a computer tech or work in my group. I would have to suggest the only way for them to be a computer tech would be to claim it on the Internet where they have a better chance of convincing others.
>”but as I wrote, I tried a variety of computers”
You only mentioned that you tried it on one other:
>”I just tried the SOS Englemann Soft-Xpansion PDF 9 Editor download sequence again from another computer using another email and got the same banging-my-head-on-a-brick-wall results”>”and a variety of downloads from SOS,”
There is only one download from SoS.
>”AND I tried downloads directly from the vendor,”
You were never clear if it was a Trial for version 10, or a Trial for version 9 they allowed you to download. Regardless of which version you used as a Trial, it is understandable that it would work the same way as the offer on SoS. Either way, you were not able to complete the install and registration. Therefore, you should not refer to yourself as if you are a knowledgable computer tech person when others were successful.>”the failure was ONLY at the vendor’s authorization brick wall or telling me I have to do something else, and then the program installation self-exiting,”
Then that is a problem you had with the activation, not the software itself as you have been suggesting. Your claims have been “the software” does not work, but the ones of us that installed it and activated it know that it does work.
>”or telling me I have to do something else”
If the Internet activation method fails, then what other choice do they have but to tell you to do something else. A lot of the offers we have seen on SoS did not even offer an alternative. The e-mail activation method works for anyone.
>”installation self-exiting”
The installation does not self-exit unless you fail to do a step the installation requires or you have some other process on your computer that would stop the installation process. When prompted to install the C++ redistributables, if you do not allow the installation to continue, the setup will end. The text, “Otherwise, the setup process will abort” is an example of how the setup can “self-exit.”
>”at the vendor’s authorization brick wall”
You cannot fairly call it a brick wall if it was designed to allow activation via the Internet, and if you do not have anything that blocks that process, it does exactly that … otherwise, no one would be able to register the software. Obviously, others have. You also stated that this is 2017 software, so if the activation process did not work, don’t you think Soft Xpansion would have discovered the problem way before this?
They probably use the same activation method on all of their software, so I am sure within the last three years, Soft Xpansion has had many successful activations, so do you think they will suddenly take your word for it that it does not work? Not likely.
>”– the number SOS gives fails,”
You never explained how you arrived at the decision that it fails. Most likely, the activate via Internet failed, and you did not want to create an e-mail to activate as the alternative method. If that is not the case, you need to explain exactly how you arrived at “– the number SOS gives fails.” I would love to see a screen session of your entire experience from download, e-mail received, install steps, your choice at how you chose to activate, and why there was an ultimate failure on your end.Activation via the Internet cannot succeed if something blocks the method used. If it is not your computer, it might be in a router, a modem, or the ISP that blocks it, so it wouldn’t matter how many computers you try it on. Since Soft Xpansion offers an alternative method (via e-mail), anyone should be able to activate the software.
>”If anyone here can share how they got it working, great … what, nobody can share how they got it working, oh my.”
I can share how I got it working. I save a screenshot of every step of all my installs so that I have a reference as to what each screen had on it.
I got it working with no problems. I followed the directions. There are two reviews so far; they got it working just fine. Several other comments say they too got it working. Because you could not register the software, you are so mad at Soft Xpansion that you don’t want anyone that does get it working to even try-it-out to see if it meets their needs. You stated:
>”… rip it out if you accidentally installed anything”I don’t think anyone “accidentally installed” the software, but if they did successfully install and activate it, let them be the judge. If it is awful software, we are bound to hear it from multiple people, not have to base our opinions on someone that couldn’t even install it.
If it truly is an activation failure, after 3 years of being sold and installed, seems like someone else would have problems too.
>”Soft Xpansion needs to know what the hardware-key is for your computer [ … because they have trust issues that we can’t overcome, they have put themselves behind a brick wall of their own construction ].”
Most software companies do have trust issues, and for good reason, … people will take advantage of them otherwise. They (Soft Xpansion) need the hardware-key to keep track of which computers their software is installed on. It certainly is not a brick wall, and if it is a design of their own construction, I have seen other software products use the same method successfully. Soft Xpansion might have purchased the code from one of the companies specializing in setup and activation software. It really doesn’t matter what its origins are; it works.
>”They will send the 16-digit key to their servers to activate the program [ How can they send us anything when they do not have our email address?”
They cannot and they are not trying to. Read what I stated again. The 16-digit key is referring to the hardware-key that defines your computer. Soft Xpansion is sending the hardware-key FROM the user’s computer TO themselves using their own activation software. They do not need the user’s e-mail address to do that. That takes place if you activate by using the Internet method.
If the user chooses the e-mail method, then the user sends the hardware-key and the product key using their (the user’s) e-mail, thus Soft Xpansion knows what e-mail address to respond to with the activation key. They are not sending you anything via e-mail until you first send them an e-mail, and that happens only if the user chooses the e-mail method.
>”But their email address, and whatever number they want, are not cut-and-pastable from the same screen, and so we have to manually cobble together an email from a variety of sources and or hand-typing”
Well, boo hoo hoo. No, they are not on the same screen, but they each can be copied. The license displayed on the download page can be copied and so can the one in the e-mail. The hardware-key can be copied on the dialog that it is displayed on (I know it looks greyed out, but you can select it and copy it). Their e-mail address can be copied from the SoS offer page. All three pieces can be copied, no typing needed. Sending the data to support@soft-xpansion cannot be considered a major issue. Sure they could have prepared the e-mail themselves, but the e-mail method is probably not used very often; after all, it is a backup to the Internet activation method. It probably is not their top priority to prepare the e-mail body for you. It must be high on your list; I’m surprised you even mentioned it. No matter if they did prepare it for you, the user would have to copy the “prepared e-mail” and put the information in an e-mail, and click the send button.
>”So, did you try that route, email?” >”No?”
Yes, of course I did. I did both (Internet activated and e-mail). I wanted to make sure both methods worked so when I suggest it or recommend it to others that I will know what happens. Here are the details:
I copied the license key/product key they displayed on the download page (and also in the e-mail SoS sent), and then pasted it into a new e-mail.
I copied the hardware-key from the setup dialog and pasted it into the same e-mail.
As requested, I sent them to [email protected].It took a while until they responded, probably due to being in a different time zone far away from me, but they did send the activation key file. It was in a ZIP file named activation(nn).zip (nn is a number).
I opened the zip file. It contained a file with the same name as the zip file it was in, but with the extension “key.” I extracted the activation(nn).key file and placed it with the other setup files. Back in the dialog of the setup program displayed after I chose the e-mail route, I pasted in the license/product key (sent in the e-mail) in the blank field on the left (labeled Product key). The right side has the hardware-key already.
Then I used the browse feature under the product key and hardware-key to locate the activation(nn).key file. I selected the activation(nn).key file, and then clicked OK. Instantly, the program displayed a dialog stating “Congratulations! Your product is successfully registered now. Good luck! That is the same message displayed when the program is activated via the Internet.>”I’m shocked, SHOCKED!”
Maybe you should be. Both methods work as specified.
>”And locking the license into computer hardware is so mainframe.”
And so is everything else about PC software. There is no such thing as “so mainframe.” It is a mute point. Some PC software is licensed per computer and some is licensed per user. Licensing per user was never really an option for mainframes. Mainframes had many users, and even the department head could change. Sensibly, the software was licensed per computer. Now with individuals using a computer that no others access, there is the option to license per user, but there is no rule that all software must now be licensed per user.
Soft Xpansion produces a lot of software that is used in Enterprise level businesses. Those businesses have people come and go over time. It makes sense that Soft Xpansion would not license per user. The phrase “so mainframe” does not indicate Soft Xpansion is not keeping up with modern times, but it is a badge of honor that they have big-time customers.
>”Heck, even ancient Acrobat 5 Pro beats Soft-Expansion”
If you claim that you were not successful in activating Soft Xpansion’s Perfect PDF Editor, then how do you know that Acrobat 5 Pro beats “Soft-Expansion” (presuming you mean Soft Xpansion)?
>”Adobe released self-authenticating lifetime licenses along with final program installations for CS Creative Suite programs including Acrobat Pro with OCR, and offered them to ANY [ Adobe. com ] registered users”
You did not mention that it was offered to “Adobe registered users” before now. Offering them free to Adobe registered users is not helpful to the individuals that are NOT Adobe registered users. You never mentioned to Gene that he needs to be an Adobe registered user or his endeavors will fail. Regardless, the person I spoke to at Adobe says that it is not possible to activate the Adobe Creative Suite of any version regardless if it is for an Adobe registered user or not. They have discontinued the Adobe Creative Suite product line.
Hello,
The SOS downloader downloaded OK, and it went through the motions, but nothing was downloaded.
Thank you Peter, I’ll give that a try!
SharewareOnSale downloader is still not working. Tried downloading multiple times and it’s not even launching.
All the moaning and rending of garments that’s been going on here inspired me to try downloading the offer to see what all the fuss was about.
Crickets. Not a hint of a hitch, right up through running the result. I did expand the contents of the downloaded .zip file into a temporary directory just in case even now Windows hasn’t quite managed to make expanded .zips work exactly like normal directories, but that was the only precaution I added to the relatively simple instructions.
I agree with Peter Blaise.
The key given isn’t the correct one.
I got an error & sent an email to [email protected].
No answer yet.
Like above I’ve already spent more time than this software is worth.I do want to say I rarely have a problem with a software sharewareonsale offers.
So cudos to them but just check out the keys better before posting the software.Gosh [@Gary], we’re spending an incredible amount of writing NOT about the functioning of the Soft-Xpansion Perfect PDF 9 Editor program itself.
That’s a clue.
Enough said .. because there is nothing so many of us CAN say about the program, because we ain’t got it.
__________To your points, in random order:
– I’m not much for “credentials”, having seen comments like “… I have a higher IQ/degree/PHd/older-than-you …” crapola that mean absolutely nothing, and comes across as the meaningless braggadocio it is, the only thing that matters is accuracy, regardless of the supposed credentials of the speaker ( and what would a dueling of our credentials produce, a working piece of software? I do not think so ). I also ignore voting in comment threads, as voting is also absolutely meaningless.
– I laid all failures at the door of the vendor, all failures were off my computers, and at their end, the SOS offer collapsed at licensing, all but one attempt to do their email route failed, and the one email return was so non-specific that I have no idea which computer it’s supposed to “authorize”, and the trial installation downloaded direct form the vendor aborted with a “you must …” and it exited without installing a trial … no, I do not have to do anything, I’m done. I never claimed the software does not work, because I never got to try the software, I identified that the vendor does not work, and I wrote that I do not fix vendors. An installation self-exiting is just that, it will not install, the vendor’s trial tanks with a “you must do something” error, and as I wrote, no, I do not have to do anything, I’m moving on.
– We all appreciate free stuff, and we each have our preferences for new or old or whatever, I personally prefer current stuff that the vendor wants feedback on as they develop it, so we all move forward together, I hardly see the function in giving feedback on a program the vendor has already tanked and moved on from, but I do appreciate the occasional “close enough”, such as HD Sentinel where a prior version is fine for me, especially when newer versions are only to address the Windows 10 POS Phone Operating System, but this has nothing to do with Soft-Xpansion’s Perfect PDF 9 Editor, this is just a general point-of-view I share if vendors care to see who we are.
– I told folks to rip it out instead of TRYING to get it to work, because it does install, it just won’t work, not even in trial mode, so why bother, especially when the vendor doesn’t care, as exhibited in their “take it off the discussion thread and email us instead” – no, I only do things in public on the discussion board in plain and inclusive view of everyone else, that’s what a discussion board is for.
– Yeah, the “key” from SOS is merely the receipt proof-of-(free)purchase to tell Soft-Xpansion that our subsequent request to license-up our installation is legit, then Soft-Xpansion trips over themselves and falls face-in-the-dirt over hardware licensing. I haven’t seen hardware licensing since, I dunno, IBM mainframes? Especially not in the PC marketplace for pedestrian PDF editors, the PC marketplace where computers get swapped out so frequently that hardware licensing is probably the best way to alienate end users I can think of, and if alienating end-users was Soft-Xpansion’s goal, then they nailed it.
– I LOVE your “boo hoo hoo” paragraph explaining how simple it is … and is … and is … and is … and is … ( oh, c’mon, how many ore steps in “it’s simple” ? ) to collect everything Soft-Xpansion themselves need to … oh, wait a minute, I already have the program installed, and it will not work, not even in trial mode, and Soft-Xpansion “needs” more? And they want me to collect all that “more” for them, from here, and there, and hand-type, and hope something happens, eventually, should I wait or should I go, will it be immediate during my installation session, or will it arrive hours or days later, or never ( never say never, “not yet” is the case for me – and why, I dunno, should I troubleshoot the email failure, too? )? Seriously? Do they think this is a way to expand their client base? Your use of the key file was as ( non ) simple as your ( non ) simple description of assembling the ( non ) simple email – that is, both were convoluted and without controls – and you claimed all of that was simple, so simple that Soft-Xpansion can’t even do it themselves, oh my … and their program promises what level of programming skill if they can’t even get over this supposedly simple first hurdle? You gotta re-read your 2 paragraphs there, they’re great reading, you take forever to describe the steps to get things working, with unknown wating for a response form Soft-Xpansion in between, and say, essentially, “see how simple?”. Yeah, no, but thanks for putting us through the pain of not only how simple it isn’t, but how Soft-Xpansion thinks, or doesn’t.
– SOS had two phases of downloads for this offer, one before and one after their fix, and SOS told us to re-download to try again, plus we can re-download anytime for any reason, just to see if later-in-the-day versions are different, and we can always log in as another user anytime because, hey, some of us live with other users, so there might be more than just two or more computers involved, but there might also be more than two or more actual real live people involved, none of which is germane to the failures of Soft-XPansion themselves.
– Your explanation that Soft-Xpansion expects a computer to be used by a variety of people, so they license computers, makes sense, and is exactly the mainframe mentality that completely contradicts your own assessment that nowadays in the PC world only one person uses a computer, so, neither you nor Soft-Xpansion can get this straight – SOS is not the corporate enterprise where Soft-Xpansion is selling to a purchase-order department, and then having their software installed by the tech support staff, for any number of end-users to queue up and use on one terminal PC … thank you for exploring this and sharing how Soft-Xpansion has completely and totally missed who the SOS customer is.
– I know that any Adobe Acrobat Pro beats Soft-Xpansion PDF 9 Editor because Adobe Acrobat Pro has OCR, and Soft-XPansion does not, hence my comments, in context – my seeking for OCR as my ONLY reason to investigate Soft-Xpansion’s offering.
– I appreciate folks struggles with Adobe’s “giveaway” of licensed CS, a topic best served elsewhere ( but of course there is no way to activate software that needs a response from the vendor, such as Soft-Xpansion, that’s why Adobe gave away versions that do not phone home … but seeing how Soft-Xpansion chokes when trying to phone home, maybe Soft-Xpansion thinks that because Adobe turned a deaf ear to requests for licensing authentication over the web, maybe it’s a good thing? ). “Adobe registered” means signing into [ Adobe. com ], that is all, anyone can do it, it’s free.
– – – – – – – – – –
More importantly … nothing to say about the Soft-Xpansion Perfect PDF 9 Editor, I see.
Me neither.
Look, [@Gary], I really do appreciate urinalysis of my posts, and I’m especially happy that you apprently gamed Soft-Xpansion’s locking system by getting two installations out of one SOS receipt, kudos, I am not worthy.
Thanks for exploring this and sharing.
.[@– bill] wrote to [@Peter Blaise] “… you’ve been pretty consistently dyspeptic recently …”
[@Peter Blaise] replied “… If you are thinking of the Soft-Xpansion Perfect PDF 9 Editor fiasco with your “dyspeptic” assessment, compared to other’s comments – unless you think most of us were “dyspeptic”, because most comments noted problems – I’m just being detailed and specific, I’m just being a full participant in these SOS threads, AND I offered alternatives to our fellow SOS participants, AND I offered suggestions for the vendor to overcome their own roadblocks … I still have not seen it working on-screen yet … maybe someday, maybe someday. I actually thought the Soft-Xpansion episode was funny. Thanks for exploring this and sharing …”
[@– bill] replied “… As for Perfect PDF (which was hardly the first recent instance of your dyspepsia), now that I’ve read all the comments there in detail my suspicion is that the only problem people had with following the relatively simple SoS installation instructions was that they did not include the warning that while Microsoft’s File Manager presents the content of .zip files as if they were in a normal sub-directory the contents DO NOT ACT as if they were in a normal sub-directory hence if you execute the setup.exe file inside the .zip (or after extracting only it from the .zip) it does not see the rest of the content of the .zip which may be required for the installation to succeed. I now see that @Gary made that clear before your first response to him (and before I made the same observation later). Were you too righteously indignant to bother reading them? If so, your earlier statement “If anyone here can share how they got it working, great … what, nobody can share how they got it working, oh my” strikes me as downright incompetent given that @Gary had already done precisely that. All in all, hardly a good advertisement for the wisdom of crowds …”
[@Peter Blaise] replied “… Oh [@– bill], no, [ @Gary] did not say how he got Soft-Xpansion Perfect PDF 9 Editor working, only that it worked, and only later claimed to also try email authentication, which I complimented him on for getting 2 installs on 1 free/purchase reciept, in spite of Soft-Xpansion trying to clamp down on excess installations; the problems others and I had were not ZIP file related, as much as we were experiencing blocked registration screens where Soft-Xpansion’s own program said that it could not phone home, and that was well after successful installation, well after successful use of the installation resources provded in the ZIP file, we all discovered the amazing and unique happenstance of successful installation of a program that will not even work as a trial, a program that demands to register or exit, but since it can’t register, it exits, so we all had successful installations that would not even come on screen to see how the program works, we then shared that it was a waste of time to install something that would not even let us see and try anything inside the program, hence our references to alternatives, and our call to skip Soft-Xpansion as essentially NRFPTY, Not Ready For Prime Time Yet – Nerf Putty. While I appreciate your apparently directive feedback on my posts ( “dyspeptic“, “dyspepsia“, seriously? “… a persistent or recurrent pain or discomfort in the upper abdomen due to the inability to digest something eaten …” … okay, maybe there’s an analogy there to Soft-Xpansion’s program and policy being an indigestible pain for our computers and for ourselves ), why not participate in any thread and instead write about the software under review? Oh, no one actually did that for Soft-Xpansion Perfect PDF 9 Editor. I do not wonder why …”
… and still no discussion of our experience of Soft-Xpansion Perfect PDF 9 Editor features and benefits, which I can not offer since it still has yet to appear on any of my computer screens.
.Alternative: free Ashampoo PDF Pro v1.11, I just installed it, it asked for the license before installing, I cut-and-pasted the licenses from the download site, the installation accepted the license immediately with no argument, it completed the installation without errors, then the program opened instantly, fully functional, all features and options and controls immediately available to explore, I then opened a scanned PDF, tried to copy text, it said it was a scanned PDF and needed to be OCR’d first, I performed OCR Optical Character Recognition, it proceeded without error, and then I copied accurate text out of that scanned PDF, easy peasy.
Yes, yes, Soft-Xpansion, it IS possible … for Ashampoo.
Thanks Ashampoo.
Next?
.You really do seem to be in serious denial about your own incompetence, so I’ll just lead you to it by hand. On September 3rd at 2:17 P.M. @Gary posted the following:
on 2020-09-02, I was able to download (key is displayed on download page, plus it arrives in an e-mail) the file, which is a ZIP file. Make sure you extract all of the contents of that ZIP file, and place them in a regular folder. A simple way to do this is to open the ZIP file (double-click), select all (Ctrl+A), then copy to the clipboard (Ctrl+C), then use the Backspace key to step up (out of the Zip file), then you can paste what you can have copied to the clipboard into the folder you are now in (Ctrl+V), or move to any other folder and do the paste (Ctrl+V). Just make sure you have all of the files from the ZIP file together (or it will not work).
When you have all files accessible, double-click the setup file. Right after agreeing to the license, you will get a prompt to install the C++ Redistributables (based on its determination that you do not have them). Let the setup install them or it will not work. A lot of people think they already have them but the setup does the check the correct way Microsoft dictates. It does not matter if you think you already have them or not, let the setup install them (even if you did already have them, it will not hurt to install them a second time). If the setup program determines that you already have them installed, you shouldn’t get prompted at all. Regardless, it takes only a few seconds to get past that part.
Proceed through the remaining steps until you get to the activation page asking if you want to activate via the Internet or by e-mail. Either way, Soft Xpansion needs to know what the hardware key is for your computer. They will send the 16-digit key to their servers to activate the program. You will need to enter the 8-digit license key that was displayed to you on the download page and also sent to you in an e-mail. When the program has been activated, you will be told.
Next, Soft Xpansion wants you to reboot your computer. This is to ensure the Microsoft components are all connected and working. In most cases, the program will work whether you reboot or not. If anything does not work, then do a reboot and try again.
Your own drivel which I quoted was posted nearly 5 hours later.
Several of the other posts made it clear that the posters had not followed the directions above and instead of trying to figure out why they had not succeeded ran off into the weeds (as you did) trying to mix the free offer here with the trial Perfect PDF offer on its Web site (hardly a recipe for success given that they were totally different). All of that babble was, of course, completely extraneous to the issue of whether the offer here worked.
As I suspect there’s something general to be learned from these interchanges I’ve been continuing the discussion here at Abstract Curves, but if you’d prefer to move it over to the Perfect PDF discussion I’m fine with that and will copy this there for a start.
@ bill
I have installed many programs from sharewareonsale.
I didn’t “run off into the weeds”.I followed these directions:
The download link for Perfect PDF 9 Editor is given to you above. Your license key for Perfect PDF 9 Editor is also given above. Download and install Perfect PDF 9 Editor. After install, run Perfect PDF 9 Editor and register it with your license key. You will be asked to register the software the first time you run it; make sure to select ACTIVATE VIA INTERNET. Make sure you are connected to the Internet and that your computer clock is up-to-date. (You may get errors if your clock is not at the current time.) Enjoy!
I even checked the computer clock as instructed.
I used the YOUR REGISTRATION INFO
License Key:
I didn’t post the 8 digit license key as I suspect Ashraf doesn’t want me to do that here.I even sent an email to [email protected] .
No answer to this email as of today.The software just doesn’t activate with the key provided
This is the error message.
It is difficult to post an image here or I would have done that.
Product Activation
An error occurred while activating your product. Please contact our
_ support team ([email protected]).So don’t blame those of us that tried to activate this software.
The real problem is with soft-xpansion.comNot possible, [@– bill], when Soft-Xpansion doesn’t even respond to an email ( I’ll be generous and say “yet” ) … but thanks for saying it must be me, I must be “incompetent” – well then, how better, how more “competent” do I need to be to await an email, is there a professional certified tech’s “competent” way to wait for an email to arrive, some way of waiting that I have yet to learn?
– – – – – – – – – –
Ahh, the endless repeats … and for what, it’s not as if I’m editing my telling of my exploring this and sharing, it’s not as if I’m changing my story, it’s always the same, repeated here one more time for the hard of reading and comprehending:
[ SOS Soft-Xpansion offer ] No, I didn’t “… run off into the weeds ( as you presume I did ) …”, I had the software successfully installed without error, without technical challenge, and without any problem UNTIL the Soft-Xpansion software itself tried to phone home, which it could not do, and their alternative of emailing them got no response ( I’ll be generous and say “yet” ) … so, in order to troubleshoot and find the source of the problem, and in order to isolate if it was me not not me, I tried multiple SOS downloads, and I tried multiple computers, all with the same dead-end result: Soft-Xpansion can’t phone home, and Soft-Xpansion have ( “yet” ) to respond to emails … so much for the SOS Soft-Xpansion offer.
[ Soft-Xpansion direct trial ] I did not “… try to mix the free offer here with the trial Perfect PDF offer on its Web site ( hardly a recipe for success given that they were totally different ) …”, but instead, as I wrote, I alternatively tried to install their program downloaded directly from their website, the installation self-exited without installing, saying I must do something else, and which point I gave up trying to overcome Soft-Xpansion’s own inability to present a working PDF editor on my screen. Note, different versions or not, but especially different versions, one would think that Soft-Xpansion would let users of older versions try newer versions to get them to buy newer versions, without having to kill their older version first, and as such, they’d allow a demo trial to install and run from a different directory while the already-licensed older version sat sacrosanct, unscathed, ready to function on demand as always, while the end-user could check out and compare both … just sayin’ … their loss.
You write “… all of that babble was, of course, completely extraneous to the issue of whether the offer here worked …” is not the point, I just wanted to see any Soft-Xpansion’s software somehow someway on screen doing something any-which-way … but their “trial” also stopped and failed, saying I need to do something, at which point I gave up troubleshooting their offerings, considering their company policies themselves to be untroubleshootable and not within my purview to waste time reverse-engineering and spending any more time on, in other words, I gave up, and suggested alternatives to others who were wondering if this was worth going ahead with troubleshooting … no one seems to say what they got, if and when they got it working, if anyone did, nope, not yet, no one has offered a hands-on exploration of discovering the comparative features and benefits of Soft-Xpansion Perfect PDF 9 Editor ( the press-release on the opening SOS page is missing any “by doing what” details ).
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LATE BREAKING NEWS:
I just got an email from Soft-Xpansion ( how many days has it been ? ! ? ), but it is bereft of information identifying what computer and what installation it is licensing, the program on the computer I thought it might match balks saying it is not a valid license, so I have no idea if its not a valid license, or if it is a valid license for another computer, or whatever … so their email has 3 problems, ( 1 ) it’s late, not contemporaneous with installation, ( 2 ) is not identifiable as to what it’s intended use is, and ( 3 ) there’s no way to confirm if its broken or not … so do I ask Soft-Xpansion to try again, to send another license authentication email file attachment, or do I try the one I received on multiple computers hoping it works somewhere, anywhere, oh please oh please oh please … or do I move on, acknowledging that Soft-Xpansion is NRFPTY, Nerf Putty, Not Ready For Prime Time Yet.
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At this point ( actually a long time ago by now ) I’m just hanging in here to see how ridiculous this can possibly get, and so far, it has lived up to ( down to ? ) expectations, even exceeded expectations, in that
– Soft-Xpansion fails to phone home,
– Soft-Xpansion fails to email home,
– Soft-Xpansion fails to provide an timely and unambiguous response to emails ( apparently it’s not automated, and whatever computer identification coding they use does not identify a computer the way an end user might identify a computer, so there’s no way for an end user to match up their emailed license files, if they work at all, with computers awaiting license permission ).
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I already share my experience of free Adobe Acrobat Pro PDF editor, and free Ashampoo PDF Pro editor, both of which provide OCR Optical Character Recognition, and I shared a list of other programs to explore, such as OmniPage and so on.
So, what PDF editors are other folks using?
.Okay, success-ish on the umpteenth try, a second email arrived form Soft-Xpansion, and I learned to take inventory and track my own
– email address,
– computer,
– key,
– computer code,
– and software version,… all of which must stay related and tracked, and any variance in any one of them requires tossing all efforts, and starting over,
… because Soft-Xpansion does not keep track of any of those critical control elements … a clue about the similar ( non ) workings of their software, read on …
I cannot imagine a corporate customer tracking and managing all of those variables.
Otherwise, the prior license file I received does nothing, I have no idea how to correlate what email, computer, key, computer code, and software version it applies to, so it is a waste of time and space, and if I want to try again, I’d have to start from the beginning, probably at the SOS main page with another email, right from the start.
I now have Soft-Xpansion Perfect PDF 9 Editor on screen, and I see why no one has commented – it sux.
I’m shocked – SHOCKED – at the paucity of responses within the program to my mouse-pointing at anything and right-clicking to see what I can do with anything I point at, and almost nothing responds to right-clicking with a pop-up menu indicating what controls I have over the thing I am pointing at and clicking on.
Was this designed during DOS days, or on mainframe terminals with no mouse?
Yet something as simple as tapping the [ Delete ] key actually deletes something from a PDF page without warning ( was I even pointing at anything? I could not tell, there was no highlighting, either ! ), but right-clicking on the same thing that was there a moment ago previously gave no response, no pop-up control menu offering [ Delete ], among other control things.
I feel for the programmers, because PDFs themselves suck, they are static page presentations, not dynamic or logically-flowing content, in spite of the effort that we as readers go through to recognize page elements versus page contents – that’s one berserker challenge for PDF-to-DOC/Epub conversion, because invariably, the converter puts the page headers and footers inside the body of the converted text, right in the middle of sentences, but we as readers ignore the headers and footers as we read contents, apparently, no one has figured that out yet, definitely, Soft-Xpansion has not figured this out yet.
A significant challenge I had in the past was to audit and reflow page elements inside PDF documents so that screen readers for the blind would present the contents in a logical fashion, at least Opera browser will create a full-length single-web-page PDF, instead of arbitrarily bifurcating and paginating the body-text contents into meaningless pieces, and causing screen readers to interrupt the flow by repeating headers and footers over and over every few hundred words, and Blackberry has a great PDF reflow algorithm where I could read a 500-page book on the little 3-inch screen with no problem, because it re-flowed according to contents, not according to arbitrary and unrelated printed-page layout – yeah, PDFs are an inexcusable mess, I hate them, and only want to dump their contents to Epubs, Epubs where reflow is designed in.
Sadly, a text export from Soft-Xpansion Perfect PDF 9 Editor from a text PDF document ( not even a scanned and OCRd document, ut a PDF built probably as a page-print form a word processing document ) produces a tab-delimited text file where every word is separated from the prior word by a tab, oh my, it looks like a spreadsheet, and what do I do, open it in Word and search-and-replace tabs with spaces and hope for the best … I suppose I can write a VB script that looks for carriage returns with no punctuation and tries to reconnect sentences that have hard carriage returns in the middle of them, then manually find page numbers and headers and footers and other page elements that have landed in the middle of sentences, and delete such interruptions, what a joy.
Sadly, Soft-Xpansion Perfect PDF 9 Editor has no understanding of the contents from a reader’s point of view, but instead “sees” a PDF “document” as just an endless series of page elements, such that even the simple word “hello” is really just 5 unrelated page elements, not the humanly discernable word “hello” … there’s not even a find or search-and-replace for anything, not for user-perceived humanly-readable content, not for internal PDF page elements ( even Word has a graphics search feature ).
Soft-Xpansion Perfect PDF 9 Editor has absolutely no sophisticated intelligence, not for PDF structures, and not for content as perceived by a reader.
I experience Soft-Xpansion Perfect PDF 9 Editor as raw tools for programmers, not even up to Adobe Acrobat standards of even a decade ago, such that I would not even consider using this to audit the flow of a PDF for subsequent screen-readers.
No analogy is fully illuminating, but my best attempt is that if we were, say, looking for a tour guide and driving instructor to help us explore and navigate some sight-seeing around the countryside, this would be equivalent to someone responding to our request by handing us an all-purpose hand-tool kit and saying “this is for disassembling and reassembling a car” … wha? Yeah, Soft-Xpansion is that severely disjointed from understanding what we want to do.
No, Soft-Xpansion Perfect PDF 9 Editor
– cannot edit PDF content,
– does not even have a find or search-and-replace feature,
– converts sentence content to tab-delimited words,
– has no idea how humans read and understand words connected to each other in the context of sentences and paragraphs, oh my.And I guess that is why no one has shared their experience of this software – no one can actually figure out what to do with it, or what it does that is of any value.
Soft-Xpansion Perfect PDF 9 Editor has no value.
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Yes, in spite of all that, Soft-Xpansion treats it as if it were some kind of valuable treasure, as if someone would want to pirate it – perhaps a good review is to see if anyone shares something over peer-to-peer torrents, and if not, then that’s a clue to it’s lack of value.
We can see that Soft-Xpansion so severely treasures their software, that they make it almost impossible to explore it let alone use it, at [ https :// soft-xpansion. com/support/ra/ ] see their stringent ( paraphrase ) “… uninstall it from an old computer and note the uninstall code, but if you can’t uninstall it, email us with the license code and ask for permission and we’ll see if it can be installed again …”
Yeah, even if you’re staring at your own property, your own backup of your own installation masters, and your computer crashes, so you walk over to your other computer, or repair your own computer, maybe such that it “looks” different to Soft-Xpansion, such as swapping the system board but using the same hard drive to reboot ( I walk boot drives among my varied and disparate Dell computers and only need one or two reboots to have them settle down as fully functional on the next hardware, no reinstallation of any software or licensing necessary ), so, no, you cannot actually use your precious purchase of Soft-Xpansion software or the installation resource without awaiting yet another email roundabout with Soft-Xpansion assessing if you are worthy of permission to use your own purchased installation again, please wait for a verdict, and please wait for a new license file, but install it first so there is a computer code to share with Soft-Xpansion, but you cannot use your instllation after installation because, well, just because, so nya nya nya, we’re watching you, you’re not using our software without permission, are you?
Can you imagine getting into any car and having it say “… license and registration please, and letter of permission from the owner, we need the owner to certify they are the owner, too, and we need you to unregister driving all other cars, and the owner must certify they have no other cars, and have deregistered all other cars, and this is the only car that you and or the owner will be driving … please wait, we’re thinking of letting you drive, maybe well get back to you when we feel like it, just be patient and wait, you did not have anything else important to do with your time, we are more important than you, that’s why we have your money, and you do not, sukka …” … or somthin’ like that from Soft-Xpansion.
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Some of you may wonder why I have all this energy over this, why bother?
There are a handful of reasons beyond the entertainment value.
I value our fellow SOS participants, and I want us to get the best experience possible here at SOS, so
– I share my experience, hoping others get advantage from it,
– I prod the vendors to step up to serve us all, to serve us well,
– I share alternatives when I find them, so we all can at least get something installed, and working, to accomplish what we came here for.I have nagged other vendors, and some have evolved and taken advantage of my shared hard-wrought insights ( Peter Norton, Google Picasa, Codusiv Diskeeper, Sony, and others ), and some vendors turned away ( Steve Gibson, Epson, Minolta, Apple, and others ), I wish them all the greatest success, especially for the greatest success for their customers and former customers, and if they miss some customers, if they become misaligned with my own priorities, that happens, and we move in separate directions, untethered, but at least I offered, at least I tried.
Some folks simply say “… what, no lifetime license, I can’t reinstall it, well then, I’m not even downloading today’s offer …” and they move on, we never hear anything more form them.
I like to think out loud ( obviously ) and I’m grateful for all of us readers and correspondents, regardless of the apparent tussle of viewpoints, and for those wondering why any thread here at SOS wastes everyone’s time going to 3 pages, they can just scroll on, no harm was done, it’s all recyclable electrons over the Internet.
Thanks for letting me explore this and share.
.I seem to have successfully installed the program, using the license key provided, however it reports a necessity to reboot prior to using, which is not convenient right at this minute. So, I was not prepared to say whether the program actually came up up at that point, and what it can or cannot do or how well, intrinsically or compared to other programs in this category. As to having gotten even this far, either some issues got corrected along the way, or I chalk it up to a YMMV. (YMMV, as in: I have several computers of the same general design from the same manufacturer, separated by a period of a few model years. Some of them can boot from a USB stick — with proper BIOS settings set, of course — yet some of them can not. Some of them will only see a connected external hard drive if it is turned on just prior to computer bootup; others have no such limitation. Go figure. It’s not worth my time or effort to try and determine WHY.)
Peter Blaise wrote:
“no one seems to say what they got, if and when they got it working, if anyone did, nope, not yet, no one has offered a hands-on exploration of discovering the comparative features and benefits of Soft-Xpansion Perfect PDF 9 Editor.”After Peter’s addendum of 9/7, I am neither encouraged nor optimistic on that score. Peter’s commentaries here are very much in the great tradition of past regular contributor Giovanni, and a select few others — which is saying quite a lot. As to a certain snide and verbose detractor, I know of no such track record to fall back on.
I’m no great fan of PDF in general, either, or trying to work with it . . . and Peter has provided some possible explanations as to why. And Yes, Opera has solved some annoying problems that the other browsers haven’t. (In seeing and being able to print non-truncated pages too.)
[Just a btw, but I tripped over a page redirect from Soft Expansion, offering an upgrade to a version that includes OCR, for 5 Euros. If I was already sold on their product, that offer would have been of interest.]
Meanwhile, within this category, I guess I am left with exploring PDF Element 6, for which I had previously purchased a license, although at this point it is one version behind being current. And, after the conflicting testimony here, I am left wondering whether or not it is indeed possible to get the older FREE Adobe editor functional, and just what hoops I’d still need to jump through in order to accomplish that ?
[@Gene], the only reason to reboot is to have Soft-Xpansion Perfect PDF 9 Editor become the default previewer and opener for Windws File Manager and PDF files, both of which are totally unnecessary to the functioning of the program itself.
Soft-Xpansion has a trial of Perfect PDF 10 Premium with OCR at [ https :// soft-xpansion. com/products/perfect/trial/ ] which requires removing / uninstalling prior working Soft-Xpansion Perfect PDF software first ( see? remove a working version to try a trial – doh ! ).
Considering that the text export from Perfect PDF 9 Editor was tab-delimited between words and looked like a spreadsheet, I have zero hopes that their OCR will suddently be the uniquely functional part of their program.
But considering that I have no desire to keep Perfect PDF 9 Editor, then removing / uninstalling it will be a pleasure.
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Free Adobe Acrobat 7 Pro and license here ( plus other CS products ):
[ https ://web. archive. org/web/20190407200600/https :// helpx. adobe. com/creative-suite/kb/cs2-product-downloads. html?promoid=19SCDRQK ]I recently found Adobe Acrobat 8 Pro and license in the wild, I’ll let you know when I refind it.
I also owe you all the script for implementing the 64-bit dll during installation of prior Adobe products, though I myself found it on the web, of course, and you all can, too – most of what I spend my time doing is refinding stuff that migrates around the wild.
It’s a preoccpation, I guess.
Thanks for exploring this and sharing.
.You’re suffering from a truly impressive case of verbal diarrhea, combined with a propensity for doubling down on the incompetent utterances sprinkled through it (@Gary pointed out several but I wasn’t sufficiently interested to be that thorough). Unless you’re a serious devotee of Donald Trump the most charitable explanation I can think of is severe cabin fever.
The issue right now is very, very simple: @Gary provided a detailed description (with accompanying explanations) of how he had succeeded in installing Perfect PDF nearly five hours before you claimed that no one had done so – and the only way it extended the description given through SoS was in specifying that the entire content of the downloaded .zip file should be extracted to a normal Windows directory and the setup.exe file should be executed from that directory (SoS’s instructions during the download DID include the fact that manual installation was required rather than simply clicking the ‘Install’ button but would have benefited from more detail about Windows’ foibles with regard to installing from multi-entry .zip files).
For all your babble since, my question to you is equally simple: have you ever actually tried carefully following @Gary’s directions or do you just want to continue to whine about how unresponsive the vendor is when people who clearly have no clue what they’re doing (even after other people have tried to help them) continue to whine along with you? I appreciate that there was apparently some problem with SoS’s ORIGINAL download mechanism (which I never tried) but that was rectified relatively early on.
As for the approachability of the application itself, have you by any chance tried pressing the F1 key? Strange as it may seem, that opens the application’s internal User Guide. I understand that newbies may be more accustomed to being led by the hand (e.g., by a Menu item) but the developers of Perfect PDF (v9 of which dates back to 2014) may have preferred to devote their screen real estate to other purposes (a choice which can certainly be debated with the understanding that standards in such areas have evolved over time and differed according to vendor philosophies – e.g., Microsoft vs. Apple).
