Acronis True Image: The Good Gone Bad!

[threegee]

Was just about to buy W7 compatible Acronis True Image 2010. Just in the nick of time I find out that it has been spiked with some crazy DRM system - which means the serial number you buy is not the serial number you use to install it with! Apparently it's been like this since the (Vista compatible) 2009 version.

Result a sale permanently lost to Acronis; I will just stick with what I've got, and never consider their product line ever again. After all a bitcopy of a hard drive is a bitcopy of a hard drive, whatever is on it. And, who needs all the added rubbish in the latest versions? Quality 1TB drives are cheaper than a modest restaurant meal for two these days.

Would be interesting to know if the old versions of Acronis are fully functional under W7's XP emulation.

If you can boot Linux on your machine you can clone a drive off the command line and do all sorts of stuff with native Windows partitions anyway. In fact when you play with Linux Gparted you are left wondering why the whole hard drive management thing is made so difficult under Windows.