Hacker News Reader

Comment by blobs | Hacker News Reader

This is what Avid sends you after creating an account:

Your iLok account allows you to:

  - Use the free iLok License Manager application to manage your licenses
  - Take advantage of Zero Downtime and Theft & Loss Coverage premium services to help protect your investment

Take advantage of Zero Downtime I never understand what they mean with this, but now it definitely lost all its meaning.

View on HN

Ah yes, the excellent service of paying additional money to be able to actually use the software you've paid for...

Zero Downtime is a paying option provided by PACE (makers of the iLok and the copy protection software) for extended support if one loses their licenses. It covers a broken/lost/stolen iLok, not sure how it would fit in this case.

A few years back I was working for a company that used iLok protection and had a major outage like this, we nicknamed it the iLokalypse.

From what I recall zero downtime simply meant if a ilok went missing then PACE would assist you in replacing license(s) to a replacement ilok from their end. Trouble is often times you couldn’t quickly find a replacement ilok without a guitar center nearby and would still have to order it through avid store and wait for it to arrive if you didn’t plan for this.

ZDT also covers RMA situations where you iLok broke. Instead of them sending you a new iLok after a couple of weeks that has whatever licenses they were able to recover off the old one, they send you a new one with all of the licenses from the old one the same day you send them the old one, so you end up with like a 24-48 hour turnaround instead of losing a week or two.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com