About Activation

Activations Always Grow Back

Activating A License

A never ending crop.

A Manifold® product license must be activated to run on a computer system. Activation authorizes that computer system and removes authorization from any prior computer systems.

The first time you run a Manifold product it will raise an Activation dialog. Enter the license serial number to activate the license on that computer. It's that easy.

Your computer must be connected to Internet during activation. After activation, the computer must have an Internet connection, at least occasionally, to maintain activation. The software uses Internet to verify the license is still authorized on that computer, and has not been moved to a different computer.

Licenses will check status infrequently, only once every week or two. That enables use where Internet service is unreliable or occasional. Even if the computer has no Internet connection at all, the product will continue to launch for a limited time, for at least ten days. That makes it easy to travel with a portable computer through regions where Internet is not available.

However, the computer must have at least some Internet connectivity from time to time, to allow occasional checks of license status. If Internet is not available during repeated attempts to confirm license status, eventually the product will not launch until Internet becomes available.

Once activated, a Manifold product license will stay activated as long as that computer continues to operate in reasonably unmodified form. Significant changes, for example, re-formatting a hard disk and re-installing Windows, will require activation again.

Activations renew automatically.

To activate after changes, and to allow moving a license to a different computer, each Manifold product license comes with a never ending crop of activations.

A Never Ending Crop

Activations are like a crop of apples: after being used they automatically grow back over time, so they can be used again and again.

Each Manifold license has a crop of four activations, like a tree that has four apples. When the product is activated the first time, that is like picking one of the apples, leaving three more apples on the tree.

Activations renew automatically. Activations renew automatically. Activations renew automatically.

Activations renew automatically. As soon as you "pick" an activation, it starts growing back again. It takes twelve months for that activation to grow back and to become available again. While the picked activation is growing back you will have a crop of three activations you can use. If you do not use any more activations, in twelve months you will again have four activations available.

The activation system ensures that most users, who only upgrade a computer once a year or so, will always have at least three spare activations available, and often four spare activations.

Moving a License

Moving a license to a new computer requires an activation on the new computer. Activating a license on a new computer will de-activate it on any prior computers. There is no need to manually de-activate the license on the old computer.

Suppose that after activating a Manifold on our first computer, two months later we want to move the license to a different computer. We can do that simply by installing and launching Manifold on the new computer, providing the serial number, and thus activating it on the new computer.

Activations renew automatically.

Activating on a new computer automatically removes authorization for the old computer. There is no need to "deactivate" on the old computer. Even if the old computer has stopped functioning or has been lost we can still move the license to a new computer.

After activating on the new computer, we will have used two activations from our renewable crop of four activations. The first activation we have used will already be growing back, with only ten months to go before it has grown back and is available for use again. The second activation we have used, to activate the new computer, will have just been picked and will require twelve months to grow back before it can be used again. But we still have two ripe activations, ready for use.

The analogy to a crop of four apples that can be picked at any time we want, with a picked apple growing back in twelve months, is a useful way to think of activations. We can use activations as we prefer, eating many apples in short order and then waiting for a new crop, or we can pace ourselves and pick a new apple from time to time so we always have apples that are ready to pick or which soon will ripen.

For example, if we want to move our license from machine to machine four times in the first month of use, we can do that. But then we will have to wait another eleven months before the first activation we have used has "grown back" and is available again.

Activations renew automatically.

If we use our license in a more normal way, activating on the computer we routinely use and only activating again if the hardware fails and must be replaced, we very rarely will need to activate more than once per year. We will always have a stock of three or four activations to use.

If we move our license to a different computer every few months we might have two or three activations at different states in the twelve month process of "growing back", with every few months the oldest of the activations we used becoming available again. If we do not move our license too frequently we will always have at least one ripe activation ready for use at any time.

Activations Always Grow Back

Activations never stop growing back. Having a crop of four activations where any picked activation always grows back in a year means we can replace our computer every three months on average, and we can keep doing that for years into the future without any fear of not having an activation when we want it.

Advice

  • A Safety Measure - After activating on one machine, we must wait 24 hours before activating on a new machine. This is a safety measure to prevent accidentally using up an entire crop of activations in just a few minutes.
  • Keep Up to Date - Make sure to upgrade to new versions of Manifold products, as re-activation of old or obsolete licenses may not continue to be supported once future versions of a Manifold product are released. Although Manifold may voluntarily support use of activation keys for outdated versions of a Manifold product for some reasonable period of time (such as three years) licensees should not expect such support forever.
  • Activation Guide - Please visit the Activation Guide page for a step by step guide to activating an installation.

Useful Links

Pages especially useful for installation and activation:

  • Status Page - Get status on a serial number to see what product it authorizes, the status of activations, whether it has been revoked.
  • Activation Guide - A quick, step by step, guide to activating an installation.
  • Installation and Activation - Step by step, Release 9 User Manual topic with great illustrations. Release 8 works the same way.
  • Activation Troubleshooting - Provides a quick troubleshooting checklist that solves 99% of activation problems.
  • New Activation - Important information for users who are upgrading from older, deprecated builds to current builds.
  • Activation Frequently Asked Questions - The title says it all.
  • Activation Support - How to contact tech support for priority assistance with any serial number or activation question. No tech support token is required for activation questions using the given procedure. Activation questions for Runtime licenses require a developer level support token.
  • Product Downloads - Download the latest installations for the current release of Manifold System.

Buy Now via the Online Store

Buy Manifold® products on the Online Store. The store is open 24 hours / seven days a week / every day of the year. Orders are processed immediately with a serial number sent out by email in seconds. Enjoy the world's most advanced spatial tools today!

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Engineering

About Manifold

Manifold is a deep technology company creating advanced, parallel algorithms, next-level technology, and computation know-how that powers faster performance and smarter operations.

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Manifold® brand products deliver quality, performance and value in the world's most sophisticated, most modern, and most powerful spatial products for GIS, ETL, DBMS, and Data Science. Total integration ensures ease of use, amazing speed, and unbeatably low cost of ownership. Tell your friends!

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