Sunday, February 03, 2008

PGP Freeware still exists

If you've tried to find the PGP Freeware version recently you'll know that it is not easy to find. No matter which search engine you use you won't find a place to download the freeware version. But there is one. They just renamed it to "Free PGP Desktop Trial Software". You have to read more on the page to see that, "You now receive all product functionality for 30 days before the product reverts to functionality available in former PGP Freeware."

I'm guessing they make it hard so people will give up and pay for it. I think that is silly. If they would make it clear that this is the freeware version and that you get the full version for 30 days then people are going to download it and try out the extra features and after 30 days a good number are going to want to keep the extra features. But that won't happen if you obscure the fact that the "trial" version is in fact the "freeware" version.

2 comments:

Max Kanat-Alexander said...

Or you could always become a Linux user and use GPG! :-D

-Max

Grahame said...

I'm a language/platform/OS neutral kinda guy but the vast majority of my work over the years has been on Windows so moving to Linux right now isn't likely. I have wanted to play around with Linux to see how it is, but with my current schedule that's just not going to happen.