New Release And PREVX Customers

I can't understand Webroot company's forwarding look after many months of time for preparing this release it has not yet elaborated a plan to automatically upgrade old Prevx users to the new release. This seems vicious and in a way I already have the answer:those that already have a PrevX licence can keep it until the expiring date and those who wants to buy WSA final edition must pay a supplement or the whole packet price!!! Thumbs down, Webroot...

 

I've been out of the loop on all this as I have been traveling but let me get this straight.

I own a Prevx license at home for version 3.0. So I am unable to upgrade using that license? I have to purchase WSA as a new customer? If so, that does kinda suck.

How long will the beta stay active for?

Thanks to Joe or anyone else that can shed some light on this for me (and us).

Cheers.

 

All,
Please don't jump to conclusions with this. We're looking to get this resolved as quickly as possible. I don't have an ETA on it yet but it is our #1 concern at the moment as it obviously affects all current Prevx customers. Prevx 3.0 is still being supported and can be used/bought/renewed as it has been. Current Prevx 3.0 users will be upgraded to WSA soon but there is a lot of backend work to be done to support it. Not only does WSA use an entirely different architecture from Prevx 3.0 in the backend, it is 100% new code which has only very recently left the beta phase.

As this is brand new software, we're being cautious with the upgrade process but as soon as everything is ready and the eCommerce system can support the upgrade, we will be giving everyone the exact instructions on how to make this transition.

Sorry for the inconvenience but this will be happening as quickly as possible - it just needs to happen carefully and methodically from our end.

 

Cheers Joe and thanks for your thorough response!

 

No problem It is definitely our intention to move everyone onto WSA as quickly as possible as it is much easier to maintain for us moving forward. There are multiple threads going on about this at the moment but I'll keep this one updated as we make progress so it might help to subscribe to it if you'd like to be notified.

Thanks!

 

Thanks Joe I appreciate it. You have a PM coming atcha as well.

Cheers.

 

I think most users will learn to understand and accept this, but the point the original poster makes, and one which many others will be thinking, is why that backend work wasn't prepared in advance for the switchover to the new product. In other words, with hindsight the marriage of the two products should have perhaps gone in sync at the same time of the WSA range release. Creating transition scripts and so on after the WSA product release just makes extra work for the company.

I realise it's not as simple as that, especially where marketing is concerned, and issues to do with existing contracts, particularly with regards to partners such as Sophos.

 

Not to mention manpower...I'm sure they don't have an unlimited supply of employees to code everything in one go

 

Can we have some sort of an update on this? I am a current Prevx 3.0 user and would like an ETA for this upgrade to occur.

 

We're actively working on it but we still have a ways to go. I don't have an ETA yet but I'll let everyone know as soon as I do.

 

"a ways to go"? How on earth can this be after 3 months?

Personally i really ain't all that bothered because i have 124 days left on the Webroot beta which might be just about what i had left on the Prevx license by now.

[Grumpy mode on]However a cynical Prevx user who didn't go for the beta and really want to use the released 4.0 might be thinking Webroot really couldn't care less about old Prevx users & be right! Why bother hurry when only a fraction of users go to the forum and are aware that a much newer product is out, they will find out 2-6 months from now when this low priority license thingie is fixed. [grumpy mode off]

P.s. 4.0 is great though IMO.

 

OK, I might not be seeing things straight here but why not just send all Prevx subs new key for WRSA
that will be good for the remaining time and a link to download WRSA and stop all surport for the old Prevx?
seems like a easy fix to me

 

After several months this is a joke

 

Because if you were that smart, and you are, then it would be done. And your suggestion is just what should have been done on day one. Joe, you have been promising for 10 months that a plan was being formulated and that is now, just pure crap!. Plain and simple. Not blaming you but WebCrap.

How many folks have had their Prevx licences expire while Webroot twiddle their thumbs saying the longer it take, the less licences we have to trade out.

For those on the Webroot wagon, enjoy it, more power to you, but the above post just goes to show, how easy it really is, and how much Webroot cares less about you, and only about $$$$$$

 

SHEESH! such a simple and logical suggestion I almost fell out of my chair...cheers...

 

That's what I've been wondering for months ... I have 423 days left with Prevx SO, and I'd love to use the new product, without spending money again.

 

That's the problem - the system can't do that. We would love to upgrade all Prevx users immediately if we could - it is expensive to keep the completely separate datacenter running. However, the Webroot licensing system doesn't support the Prevx style of licenses so we are forced to continue to support Prevx customers on P3 still.

I understand the frustration here in the dozens of posts complaining about it, but would you rather have WSA's release delayed this long waiting for a redesigned solution around it?

If your Prevx license expires, the best approach is to just get a WSA license. If your Prevx license isn't expired yet, you can just continue using it as-is - when we finish the upgrade process, we will have an upgrade path in place for existing users. We're still supporting Prevx users and the fact that we still have the architecture/support/research/etc. in place is why we haven't been forced to immediately update our users.

We still are working to upgrade our existing Webroot users and that in itself is taking a substantial amout of time. WSA has been released for less than 3 months now (and the upgrade from P3 couldn't have been available before then) and there are indeed some things which we're still improving. The new system is different from anything we've done in the past and therefore can't just be tweaked a bit to support a different class of products.

I know everyone doesn't like to hear that but I can't sugarcoat it - the licensing system is far more complicated than it would seem and it is what it is at the moment and we're going to have to live through it until we've finished the full upgrade path.

We have users with several years left on their Prevx license so this is definitely a necessary system to have in place but if you could please just bear with us while we work through the technicalities, the resulting solution will be mutually beneficial.

 

*Shrug*

If I am not mistaken, they are planning to make the process seamless and automatic so a user's Prevx will just become Webroot. Perhaps a message will appear saying something along the lines of "You have automatically been upgraded to our new product, Webroot SecureAnywhere. For support, please visit blah blah..."

If they just stopped Prevx and sent out new keys, there would be novice computer users that would not know what to do perhaps and they would be unprotected. That's the only thing I could think of that could go wrong there.

Of course, Joe has stated many times that the architecture is vastly different between the two products - it seems there is indeed a lot more work on their end then we may presume.

If it makes you all feel any better, by the time you get upgraded to WSA, it should be fully bug free and fully tested by 3rd party organizations, which is a plus.

 

As for myself I have at this point Days Left: 764 Machines Licensed: 5 of 6 and even though I'm using WSA and as Closed Beta user the rest of my family are still using Prevx 3.0 and as Joe said they are still fully protected so I have no concern and they as average users have never been infected!

TH

 

Not true you are on the Webroot Wagon at times then you say nasty things about them, you can never make up your mind about a particular security product at any one time!

TH

 

TH, how I make up my mind is truly totally up to me. But I do know the difference in right and wrong and the difference in informing and misinforming ones customers.

 

So if there is such a issue conerting a license from one product to another, would that not concern you just a tad when it comes to their ability to create a stable product.

 

Meh...

...I think in this case it is more about two complicated licensing systems that have both been in use for so long and now the conversion/merging of the two will take some time.

 

The product itself is developed by a completely different team than the licensing system and the licensing system has to support the legacy Webroot 7.0/6.0/5.0/SpySweeper/WindowWasher as well, hence the complexities. The Prevx licensing system was built for Prevx SafeOnline/3.0/2.0/1.0 and has a lot of additional functionality from years ago, just like the Webroot system. A basic combining of the two isn't an option and WSA has been rewritten 100% from Prevx 3.0 and 100% from Webroot's 7.0. It was built behind the current Webroot system rather than the Prevx licensing system just because the vast majority of customers are Webroot customers. That's not to say the Prevx customers are any less important, but it is a completely different product from a much larger company and there are a number of business considerations to make as well as technical complexities to transferring users between the two systems which operate in different codebases in different parts of the world.

 

Joe I understand, but its been almost a year. Its gets kind of hard to fathom and I am sorry, I dont buy it.