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ActivInspire Licensing

sahmeepee

By sahmeepee
in Promethean Direct Support

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sahmeepee

sahmeepee

Posted
Posted

I was just in the process of running a manual install of ActivInspire when I noticed something in the license agreement:

3.3 Related Purchase: In the event that you have purchased the Software in conjunction with any of Promethean's Activboard, Activpanel or 25/32 set kits of Activexpression, and Activote devices ("Promethean Device") ("Related Purchase") there will be no additional fee payable for the Software and your consideration for the Licence will be the price paid for the Promethean Device. For the purposes of Clause 5 of this Licence the relevant fees will be the aggregate fees paid by you for the Promethean Device sold to you with the Software.

In the case of a Related Purchase,you will be licenced as a Single User only so that the Software may only be used in connection with the Promethean ActivBoard or Promethean ActivPanel which is purchased as a Related Purchase.In the case of a Related Purchase of Activexpression and Activote kits then you will be licenced to use the Software with one Promethean Activboard only .A Multi User licence will be required if the Software provided with a Related Purchase is to be used in connection with any whiteboards other than a Promethean whiteboard .

 

Now, it's not particularly clear on whether you can upgrade for free from AS3, although that is somewhat implied by the way you get to the download page.

 

As I understood it with AS3, you could originally install it on 5 PCs per Promethean IWB. At some point that was relaxed to allow free use within school and for preparation at home, as long as it was never used to display on just a projection screen or on a non-promethean IWB.

 

The above agreement seems to suggest that if you get the software bundled with an IWB, you can only install it on the PC it's connected to. What's worse, if you get the software bundled with a set of ActivExpressions (costing you about £1850) you can only use the software with one IWB... which presumably you were already licensed to use the software with anyway?! That sentence is the one which is giving me reason to wonder whether we are licensed to use Inspire on our old Promethean boards.

 

 

If the licensing is indeed free-and-easy as we were lead to believe at BETT, then can someone from Promethean:

 

a) make it clear on here

b) make it much clearer in the license agreement in the installer, because a) won't stand up in court!

 

To be honest our teachers are quite happy with AS3 for the most part - it's only the ones who want to use our new ActivExpression sets who will go bananas if they have have to use them in specific rooms.

cmssbrie

cmssbrie

Posted
Posted

Hi,

 

For Inspire Licensing, there are 4 main 'rules'.

 

a) Inspire Personal edition is completely free for any user (outside of Kazakhstan or Russia)

 

b) If you are already an ActivStudio / ActivPrimary 3 user, you are entitled to a free upgrade to ActivInspire Pro in 2009 (this may change in the future, so might be worth at least downloading Inspire now, and obtaining a serial number to unlock Pro version).

 

This also counts if you have say 500 machines already with Studio / Primary installed - you are entitled to 'upgrade' to Inspire for free on all these machines.

 

c) If you buy a board / panel / voting kit / expression kit, that kit entitles you to 1 version of Inspire. This 'one' version (Single User) can be installed on the machine you wish to use with that kit, and 4 other machines, however, it can only be used with the purchased kit at any 1 time (so, you can install on 5 machines, but only use it with one of those machines at any given time).

 

d) A Multi User licence will be required if the Software provided with a Related Purchase is to be used in connection with any whiteboards other than a Promethean whiteboard – i.e. you can’t buy one set of Expressions and use the one copy of the software to kit out a school full of competitor equipment.

 

Hope this helps, but let me know if I can get you any more info.

 

Cheers

  • Thanks 1
cmssbrie

cmssbrie

Posted
Posted

^^^^^

Just to add as well, you mention using your 'old' boards with Inspire - these 'old' boards will have been shipped with Studio or Primary, so as per point b above, yes, you are entitled to a free upgrad to Pro edition.

 

HTH

garethEds

garethEds

Posted
Posted
a) Inspire Personal edition is completely free for any user (outside of Kazakhstan or Russia)

 

Out of interest why not in those Countries? Are they sponsored by SmartBoards? LOL.

 

Or am I missing something obvious.

 

GJE

sahmeepee

sahmeepee

Posted
  • Author
Posted (edited)

Thanks for all that info ccsmbrie!

 

b) If you are already an ActivStudio / ActivPrimary 3 user, you are entitled to a free upgrade to ActivInspire Pro in 2009 (this may change in the future, so might be worth at least downloading Inspire now, and obtaining a serial number to unlock Pro version).

 

This also counts if you have say 500 machines already with Studio / Primary installed - you are entitled to 'upgrade' to Inspire for free on all these machines.

 

Am I right in assuming that we're currently pretty safe having 500 PCs with ActivStudio 3 on, despite having less than 100 ActviBoards? We've only recently started putting it on the images for classroom PCs and it would be a pain if we had to go back to (number of IWBs)*5, which is probably nearer the 325 mark.

 

I was under the impression we were fine as long as we didn't project the software onto a plain screen or a competitor board.

 

c) If you buy a board / panel / voting kit / expression kit, that kit entitles you to 1 version of Inspire. This 'one' version (Single User) can be installed on the machine you wish to use with that kit, and 4 other machines, however, it can only be used with the purchased kit at any 1 time (so, you can install on 5 machines, but only use it with one of those machines at any given time).

 

d) A Multi User licence will be required if the Software provided with a Related Purchase is to be used in connection with any whiteboards other than a Promethean whiteboard – i.e. you can’t buy one set of Expressions and use the one copy of the software to kit out a school full of competitor equipment.

 

So, in other words, we could install Inspire on 5 PCs which have no IWB (just a projector) connected, so long as we only ever project the software onto the screen when we are using the voting pads.

 

 

I'm pretty sure it's not possible to extract all that information unambiguously from the licensing document which appears during installation, so it would be helpful if your legal eagles could make the wording a little more explicit. I realise clarity is not the forte of people who write licensing terms!

 

Thanks again!

 

PS My guess for the Russia and Kazakhstan thing is that Promethean had to license some extra handwriting recognition software for the Cyrillic alphabet. There are other countries using the Cyrillic alphabet though, so maybe that doesn't hold water..

Edited by sahmeepee
PS
cmssbrie

cmssbrie

Posted
Posted

 

Am I right in assuming that we're currently pretty safe having 500 PCs with ActivStudio 3 on, despite having less than 100 ActviBoards? We've only recently started putting it on the images for classroom PCs and it would be a pain if we had to go back to (number of IWBs)*5, which is probably nearer the 325 mark.

 

Yep - if you have 500 PC's with Studio 3 already installed, each and every one of these machines is entitled to the free upgrade

 

I was under the impression we were fine as long as we didn't project the software onto a plain screen or a competitor board.

 

Yep, your right, if you wanted to use our software with another manufacturers kit, you would need another type of license to use that kit with our softwre.

 

So, if you have a generic PC image, and one of these PC's is connected and using another manufacturers board, you are not entitled to use our software (Pro Version) on their board - for this, you would have to purchase Inspire Pro for that one machine.

 

So, in other words, we could install Inspire on 5 PCs which have no IWB (just a projector) connected, so long as we only ever project the software onto the screen when we are using the voting pads.

 

If you buy 1 kit (board or set of votes or set of expressions or panel) - this kit will come with 1 copy of Inspire Pro, you can install this on 5 machines, but can only ever use it when using that kit. So, if you had 1 voting kit, you could install inspire on 5 computers, and then move that voting kit around those machines. You couldn't use Inspire Pro with the voting kit, and at the same time use it in another room.

 

This is where it gets complicated - but I think in your situation, you are best simply sticking to the part of the license which says if you already have Studio on your computer, you are entitled to upgrade Studio to be Inspire Pro.

 

If you buy any kit in the future, you would already have Inspire Pro on your machine that will use that kit (from the software upgrade route)

 

I'm pretty sure it's not possible to extract all that information unambiguously from the licensing document which appears during installation, so it would be helpful if your legal eagles could make the wording a little more explicit. I realise clarity is not the forte of people who write licensing terms!

 

The licensing 'blurb' may take time to get changed, but I'll certainly raise it as an enhancement request at my end, to hopefully make it less 'legal talk'!

 

 

Thanks again!

PS My guess for the Russia and Kazakhstan thing is that Promethean had to license some extra handwriting recognition software for the Cyrillic alphabet. There are other countries using the Cyrillic alphabet though, so maybe that doesn't hold water..

 

Pretty close - just heard back on this, and it is a different licensing structure for those countries completely - I think it's all sales / marketing / legal stuff, but where we have say a completely free upgrade from Studio 3, in most cases, they will never have actually had Studio 3 - so they would have something differnt for stuff like that.

 

(I don't think it's fully finished yet either for those countries!)

 

Hope this clears everything up for you, but let me know if I can get you any more info - and as I say, I honestly think you would be best simply taking the view that you are entitled to update any system that currently has Studio installed to upgrade to Inspire Pro.

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  • 4 weeks later...
mullet_man

mullet_man

Posted
Posted

Am totally confused, we have Activ IWB's over various years some 6 years old. They came without Activ Primary, some of our newer ones did (less than 10 I would say)

 

The original boards came with Activ PX software which is really basic, but am wanted to upgrade to Inspire if possible.

 

But I haven't a clue, some of our boards are rebranded Activ boards to e.g. Azzuri, TSD Activboard.

 

Any clues? Can I install on teachers laptops and let them use the Free Edition?

 

Any pointers greatly appreciated.

 

Stevo.

cmssbrie

cmssbrie

Posted
Posted

Hi Stevo,

 

This is where it gets a bit complicated!

 

The boards that came with Primary will be 'Promethean' ActivBoards (which were designed for Education). If they came with PX or BoardMate, these are actually 'TDS' or 'Presenta' ActivBoards (which were primarily for corperate customers).

 

You are not permitted however to update from PX to Inspire Proffessional Edition - only the personal edition will be allowed on these systems.

 

Any machine with Primary installed, you are permitted to upgrade to Inspire Proffessional edition.

 

Inspire personal edition can go on any system at all - so yep in answer to your question - the Free edition is fine on all machines.

mullet_man

mullet_man

Posted
Posted

@cmssbrie

 

Many thanks for the clarification on that, we also have some FH Brown boards which are really old.

 

As a school we were using PX and before than Boardmate, so when we got newer boards we never installed Primary as the newer boards account to less than 10 in the school, to keep a consistency accross the board for the teachers (we didn't want some using Primary and some using PX) so we keep PX.

 

If the Free Edition is good then thats the plan.

 

Thanks for the clearing that up for me.

 

Stevo.

 

Hi Stevo,

 

This is where it gets a bit complicated!

 

The boards that came with Primary will be 'Promethean' ActivBoards (which were designed for Education). If they came with PX or BoardMate, these are actually 'TDS' or 'Presenta' ActivBoards (which were primarily for corperate customers).

 

You are not permitted however to update from PX to Inspire Proffessional Edition - only the personal edition will be allowed on these systems.

 

Any machine with Primary installed, you are permitted to upgrade to Inspire Proffessional edition.

 

Inspire personal edition can go on any system at all - so yep in answer to your question - the Free edition is fine on all machines.

AngryTechnician

AngryTechnician

Posted
Posted
If they came with PX or BoardMate, these are actually 'TDS' or 'Presenta' ActivBoards (which were primarily for corperate customers).

That's very interesting. In my last school we were sold a bunch of boards that came with Px, and I always wondered why we got that and not ActivStudio. Sounds like the reseller screwed up.

  • 10 months later...
flyinghaggis

flyinghaggis

Posted
Posted

Just a quick question about staff home use rights if I can :-

 

Previously ActivStudio could be made available to staff to install at home for perparatory work. We have about 30 Promethean ActivBoards installed at our school all of which came with copies of ActivStudio.

 

Are we entitled to give each staff member with a board a copy of ActivInspire Professional (+ a licence key) to install at home as before?

cmssbrie

cmssbrie

Posted
Posted

Hi there,

 

Yes, that is correct - "Installation of the Software

for use in preparatory work only, on one other computer is permitted"

 

Hope that helps :-)

  • 2 months later...
pgillman

pgillman

Posted
Posted

Hi

 

I realise this thread is quite old now but would value an answer to a couple of related questions:

 

[1] I work at a PFI school built in 2005 that purchased quite a large number of ACTIVStudio2 Pro licences (probably enough for each classroom) together with ACTIVSlates and ACTIVHubs - are these licences upgradebale to ACTIVInspire Pro? Your website only seems to accept Pro 3 licence codes as part of the ACTIVInspire Pro download

 

[2] We have a mixture of Promethean and SMART products across the site, if we need to purchase additional licences for non-Promethean classrooms it may well be prudent to purchase a site licence - is this available, how many nodes would it cover and how much could we expect to pay?

 

[3] We recently installed ACTIVInspire Pro and were supprised to find that resources created by our teachers on previous versions (using Blockbusters etc) were no longer compatible - is there any reason for this as it seems pointless installing both new and old version on the same PC especially as Pro 3 will no longer be supported soon

cmssbrie

cmssbrie

Posted
Posted

Hi There,

 

The best way to look at it is that Inspire Pro is a free upgrade from any variant of Studio 2 or 3 / Primary 2 or 3 at the moment. Basically, if you have X amount of computers with Studio 2 or 3 installed, you are entitled to upgrade those machines to Inspire Pro edition for free (BTW, I have just tried a Studio 2 CD key on the online form, and it seemed to work ok - you might want to give it another try, and if you still have problems, might be worth giving Tech Support a ring - worst case, I think they will be able to give you a license key that will work).

 

For all othe machines, it may be worth taking into account the Persoanl edition of Inspire. This is a "cut down" variant of the software, however, it will allow users basic functionality, and of course the ability to open any .flp or .flipchart file.

 

In terms of site licensing, honestly, I don't know what the cost would be, but you may want to speak to your Promethean reseller for more information on this.

 

With regard to the final point, about certain activities no longer working in Inspire, this is because the "Question Master Wizard" from Studio / Primary (what these were actually created in) was actually developed by a third party company, and when Inspire was developed, we decided to create our own variant with "up to date" software and techniques.

 

That said, you are correct, in that the blockbusters games will no longer run in Inspire. Obviously, the workaround is to keep Studio or Primary installed purely to run these activities (Inspire and Studio / Primary can both be opened at the same time), although I appreciate this is not ideal.

 

Inspire has it's own "Question Wizard", which will enable users to create question sets, so it may be worth, if your teachers begin using Inspire, to advise them to create any future "Question Sets", to do so inside Inspire.

 

Hope this helps, but if you need any more clarification, our Tech Support team will be more than happy to help.

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