Product Activation

Paid Bartas Technologies products (applications requiring the purchase of a license) use a product activation system that allows your serial number only to be used by you by creating a unique key. The following is a detailed explanation of this system.

What is Activation?

To help reduce piracy and provide the best level of new features and support for our paying customers, Bartas Technologies requires that the software you bought be activated for use on your computer. You will not need to provide your name or any other personal information for activation, nor do we see any of this information during the process. Activation is simple, takes a click of the button and less than a minute of your time. It does, however, require an active Internet connection.

Why Do I Need to Activate?

Bartas Technologies has become popular, and has unfortunately fallen victim to piracy. There are people who are illegally passing on stolen or generated serial numbers for our programs.

The Bartas Technologies End User License Agreement allows you to reuse your serial number on up to two personal computers that you personally own for all non-freeware applications (software that must be purchased). These can be any two you choose. After those two installations are used up, you need to buy a new license, unless you have us manually deactivate a previously-activated computer. You may only have up to two computers activated at one time.

Why Did Bartas Implement Activation?

We are trying to prevent software theft by limiting the number of times any one serial number can be used before contacting Bartas. Software theft is a crime and it directly damages Bartas Technologies. To stay in business, Bartas would have to recuperate the losses by charging more for its software. We choose instead to keep our prices low by preventing the theft in the first place. Those who are honest have nothing to fear, but those who are dishonest won't make it past the door. We know it's not as convenient, but it's a small price to pay to keep great Bartas software applications coming at a low price.

What Is "Activation Exceeded"?

This simply means you've reached the limit of two computers per one serial number issued. We're happy to reset this limit by deactivating one or both of the previously-activated computers. Just send an e-mail to support@bartastechnologies.com or fill out the support request form at http://www.bartastechnologies.com/support/ and include your serial number (which you can find in the application's preferences panel), let us know you want to deactivate a previously-activated computer, and we'll do so immediately. In other words, it's not a problem!

What happens during "Activation"?

During the activation process, a unique key gets generated based on your own computer's unique hardware configuration and gets encrypted into a sequence of characters. This 'string' of characters gets sent to our e-commerce provider, eSellerate, and stored with your customer record. We allow up to two of these to be performed before we have a manual intervention process, where we simply ask that you check in with us. We realize people buy new hardware, and after you hit two uses, all it takes is a simple notification to us via email and we'll simply deactivate a previously-activated computer, allowing you to activate a new one.

Is Activation "Spyware"?

Positively not. Activation does not monitor any of your activity. Once you receive an activation key, your product is activated and it does not connect to our servers except to automatically check for updates, which you can disable in the application's preferences.  Bartas Technologies does not collect any personally identifiable information during this process. We do not see the unique numbers transmitted to our e-commerce provider.

What About the Future?

What happens if Bartas Technologies goes out of business? Bartas realizes the possibility of such an event must be considered. Rest assured that this has been well planned for. In the unlikely event that Bartas Technologies must 'close its doors', the activation system will be removed. More importantly, this small business has the support of a much larger business and several other responsible "backup" individuals to ensure the thousands of Bartas Technologies customers will not be left out in the cold. Bartas Technologies is grateful for the opportunity to serve the Macintosh community with quality software solutions and will continue to ensure its excellent reputation remains firmly intact.

More Information

Bartas Technologies's eCommerce partner, eSellerate, has additional information on their activation process, which we encourage you to read if you have any additional questions.