Let’s kick this blog off with a whinge! I do wish that people wouldn’t force free trials on you. I just installed the new version (6.0) of .NET Reflector which following its acquisition by Red Gate has now split into a paid version and a free version. I was only interested in the free version, yet on opening it for the first time I was informed that it had installed a Visual Studio plugin for me (without asking) and that said plugin was part of a 14 day free trial for the paid version.
It’s really not on enrolling you in trials in this way – if I’d known that my free trial would begin now I would have held off with the install until a time when I wasn’t so busy and could evaluate its features properly. Software vendors should really make sure they either give you the choice to opt-in to a trial or not, or at the very least make it clear what’s about to happen before you proceed, so you can choose to hold off if you want to.
