Tidestone Formula One and First Impression

These two products are bundled in Formula One Pro 6.0. Tidestone makes good products (I have purchased several of them) although their interfaces (methods, properties, events) aren't always VB friendly.

The thing I hate about their products is their very short eval period and the 10-second nag screen during that time. I just had a product that I considered using Formula One on and the eval on my computer had expired so I couldn't even put it into a project. I think that's pretty lame for an ActiveX control because we don't just evaluate things once, we often need to build prototypes for new projects as they come up so that the client can evaluate it as well. So anyway the only way around it is to use one of these serial numbers until you either decide you don't want it or you want to purchase it for the project:

TTI.FPA5.06.00.0164123562

TTI.FPA5.06.00.0014475938

TTI.FPA5.06.00.0013383109

I haven't tested these serial numbers, so if there are any problems, please let me know. You can visit Tidestone's web site at: http://www.tidestone.com

Oh, one more thing. Tidestone's new licensing policy doesn't allow royalty-free distribution. If you use the control, you need to buy a license for each developer and also pay US$99 for each person using the client application. So if you have 2 developer's developing with the control and 20 people are using the end product, you can expect to pay around US$2,200. If you are placing the control in a web page, you pay US$6,500 for an unlimited server license (for each server). And they also have requirements to place their logo and name and link to their website somewhere in your application. They've got to be kidding.

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