Had to re-register and pay again to use new update?

So I opened Pandora and it said there was a new version. I updated like a good boy. Then when it opened it was in Demo Mode and wanted me to register again. Each time I clicked it (since it had my registration number in there already) it closed, reopened, did it again. Finally I noticed it's version 5.0 so I assume we have to re-register? I did, entered the key, it's fine and all personalities are there.

Did something weird happen or do we have to buy it again for each major upgrade? And why doesn't it tell us this when we update it or I at least might have waited and not have to muck around with it wondering?

Thanks,
Mad Dog

I too am stuck in demo mode. How long did you have to wait before receiving the new registration number? I've been waiting for about 15 minutes. I'd like it much faster than that. Davo

I got it in a couple of minutes. The weird part was since it doesn't come to the one email account I'm allowed in demo mode I had to specifically go to webmail to get it.

My issue is why don't we get warned about it before we update. Or even get told about it once we're stuck in demo mode. Not very user friendly.

Thanks MD. My registration number did finally arrive, a bit over half an hour after upgrading. Way too long. If sending the number can't be made 'instantaneous', maybe Brana could allow a 24 hour grace period before the switch to Demo mode.

I agree with your point about receiving registrations numbers at email accounts unavailable in demo mode, forcing use of Web Mail. And yes, the major upgrade alert could be more user-friendly.

Mad Dog wrote:So I opened Pandora and it said there was a new version. I updated like a good boy. Then when it opened it was in Demo Mode and wanted me to register again. Each time I clicked it (since it had my registration number in there already) it closed, reopened, did it again. Finally I noticed it's version 5.0 so I assume we have to re-register? I did, entered the key, it's fine and all personalities are there.

Did something weird happen or do we have to buy it again for each major upgrade? And why doesn't it tell us this when we update it or I at least might have waited and not have to muck around with it wondering?

Thanks,
Mad Dog

Mad Dog,

Pandora Licenses have always been only valid for a single major series: 1.x.x, 2.x.x, ... 4.x.x.  The previous software release was 4.9.0 and this new version is 5.0.0.

The new license you received should include that information.

Butch

Davo wrote:I too am stuck in demo mode. How long did you have to wait before receiving the new registration number? I've been waiting for about 15 minutes. I'd like it much faster than that. Davo

Davo,

It is Sunday and in the grand scheme of life, 15 minutes is not very long.

You could always revert back to the previous release 4.9.0 buy using the previous installer.

Butch

Davo wrote:Thanks MD. My registration number did finally arrive, a bit over half an hour after upgrading. Way too long. If sending the number can't be made 'instantaneous', maybe Brana could allow a 24 hour grace period before the switch to Demo mode.

I agree with your point about receiving registrations numbers at email accounts unavailable in demo mode, forcing use of Web Mail. And yes, the major upgrade alert could be more user-friendly.

When a license is purchased on the website, an email address  is specified during the registration process and that address is used to receive the license.  It is up to you to know if that is the dominant personality email address.  Think about it, allowing email to be received on more that just the dominant personality while  in Demo mode, negates the reason for having a license mode.  There are people who might not pay for the license.

Butch

butchkemper wrote:

Mad Dog,

Pandora Licenses have always been only valid for a single major series: 1.x.x, 2.x.x, ... 4.x.x.  The previous software release was 4.9.0 and this new version is 5.0.0.

The new license you received should include that information.

Butch

Yeah, I figured that out, but I don't see where it says that on the site and more so, if I hit UPDATE and it's a new version that requires re-registration, wouldn't it be more user friendly to tell me that? At the moment I didn't have time and probably would have waited a few days to update. Plus, when it started in Demo Mode my old registration number is filled in and it again didn't say "This is a major series upgrade and you need to re-register." Beats having to mess around with it, go to the site, not finding details, deciding for $14 to re-register, and then hoping I didn't do that for nothing.

Information is knowledge.

Hold the phone: "Pandora Licenses have always been only valid for a single major series: 1.x.x, 2.x.x, ... 4.x.x." -- does this imply I have to buy the program again? To pay for software I can't really get to work properly?

I came from Eudora Pro 7 -- I expect filters to, search for messages to work, etc. In Pandora, there are a LOT of rough edges. Filters work, but only some of them. No one can explain to me why/why not. Message searches get lost for days (literally) and never find what I was looking for, and the process cannot be stopped- it ignores all attempts. My Ryzen 7 with 32GB of RAM and all NVME solid state drives should do anything I want in fractional seconds, but it takes forever, or never completes.

Many filters that can't move messages to other mailboxes seem to be able to change the label ok, while others can't even do that much. There's no diagnostics, nothing in the log, it just ignore the keystroke.

Some filters don't work automatically upon receipt, and don't work when you use "Apply all applicable filters" or Ctrl+Y but do work when you right-click the message, scroll all the way through my entire list of filters, and select the one germane filter, and click it.

That's useless. I have been unable to keep my mailboxes sorted and cleaned up since switching over.

Color me frustrated.

P.S. In demo mode it doesn't check any email from any personality. If there's new mail coming, I have no wait to check for it. I'm dead in the water.

Tom P wrote:P.S. In demo mode it doesn't check any email from any personality. If there's new mail coming, I have no wait to check for it. I'm dead in the water.

Tom P,

I must disagree with your statement.  

Pandora does check mail on the <Dominant> Personality while operating in Demo Mode. I used the following process to test whether or not Pandora will check mail on the <Dominant> Personality while running in Demo Mode:

• Shutdown Pandora,
  
• Copied the Pandora.ini file from the Mail folder to the desktop for backup.
  
• Edited the Pandora.ini file in the Mail folder to remove the [Registration] Section lines, UserName and SerialNumber.
  
• Restarted Pandora using the modified Pandora.ini file.  Pandora came up in Demo Mode with only the <Dominant> Personality present.
  
• Sent an email to the account processed by the <Dominant> account.
  
• Checked mail and the <Dominant> Personality downloaded the message I just sent.
  
• Stopped Pandora and restore the Pandora.ini file to the Mail folder.
  

Regards,

Butch

Tom P wrote:Hold the phone: "Pandora Licenses have always been only valid for a single major series: 1.x.x, 2.x.x, ... 4.x.x." -- does this imply I have to buy the program again? To pay for software I can't really get to work properly?

I came from Eudora Pro 7 -- I expect filters to, search for messages to work, etc. In Pandora, there are a LOT of rough edges. Filters work, but only some of them. No one can explain to me why/why not. Message searches get lost for days (literally) and never find what I was looking for, and the process cannot be stopped- it ignores all attempts. My Ryzen 7 with 32GB of RAM and all NVME solid state drives should do anything I want in fractional seconds, but it takes forever, or never completes.

Many filters that can't move messages to other mailboxes seem to be able to change the label ok, while others can't even do that much. There's no diagnostics, nothing in the log, it just ignore the keystroke.

Some filters don't work automatically upon receipt, and don't work when you use "Apply all applicable filters" or Ctrl+Y but do work when you right-click the message, scroll all the way through my entire list of filters, and select the one germane filter, and click it.

That's useless. I have been unable to keep my mailboxes sorted and cleaned up since switching over.  

Color me frustrated.

Tom P,

I downloaded Pandora V4.0.1 on 12 Jan 2022 and Pandora V5.0.0 on 2 Apr 2023.  So the License Fee for the V4 Series covered almost 15 months.

The Pandora license fee is quite nominal and now is actually less than a burger, fries, and drink for lunch.

Out of all the issues I have had with filters, there is only a single filter issue that has not been related to my failure to properly create the filter. For example,  I recently had an issue where an occasional message was incorrectly deleted by the filters. I used the Action section of the filter definition , Record the Event option, and selected Log the Event to add information to the Log.  Turns out I was using a RegExp filter that included the matching string ".*A.*H.*S.*".  This string caused an unintended match which caused the message to be deleted. Because of this coding failure, I learned to be very careful when using broad search strings in RegExp.

Regards,

Butch

Yes, it can take minutes for the registration code to arrive by e-mail -- too long, but it happens with other software providers too. Still, fast is best.

Having to pay for a new version is how Brana is able to spend time on software development to all our benefit, and yes it does cost a lot less than other software, but I can understand that if the new version is released a few weeks after you've paid for the old version that's upsetting. Any solution for this Brana, such as allowing xxx days for the new version to work with the old registration code? xxx equals maybe a month or two?

In a different forum thread, I've also suggested that Brana should provide an archive from which earlier versions of Pandora can be re-downloaded.

I've had problems with understanding how filter criteria work, and spent months trying to get a couple of them going correctly. It turned out to be from unexpected (or rather undeciphered/misunderstood) relationships with other filters, which was hard to establish because I have so many filters -- slightly under 3000 of them, built up over the decades including many imported from Eudora).

I have a Ryzen 7 model 1700 with 32GB of RAM and all NVMe drives  (which Microsoft disallows from being "upgraded" to Windows 11, not that I think much of many of the silly changes made and Windows 10 features dropped). It still purrs along for most tasks, except when in earlier releases of Pandora I tried to initiate  search indexing (the MailboxCat.exe task, running as a service) it caused major Windows 10 performance degradation. Brana seems to have resolved this,  at around Pandora version 4.9 or so, and Pandora's built-in indexer now is capable of running smoothly without impacting overall system performance.In my case, as I've explained elsewhere in this forum , I still use Process Lasso to restrict this indexer task to a single CPU thread (out of the 16 threads).

With Eudora 7 Pro it was normal to be able to search through my many hundreds (over 2000) mailboxes and to get results returned within a few seconds, due to the extremely good X1 Search that was incorporated in the Pro version. However testing recently with Pandora (version 4.9 and 5.0) it takes tens of seconds -- actually several minutes -- before search results are displayed. I t doesn't concern me too much, because I only carry out the occasional search, nevertheless this is not too impressive.

NOTE: It would be remiss of me not to point out that, on the whole, I'm a very happy Pandora user.

Tom P:

You do not have to purchase license for series-5, simply download 4.9 installer from here: https://pandoramail.com/pandora4.zip

After you install it all your personalities will be loaded again.

Also, make sure to un-check Check for Updates box, under Settings/Background Tasks.

There was a bug that affected filters with mailbox-related action. It's all fixed now, but if you are running version 4.9 try this:
1. There is filter A with 'Copy to mailbox' action checked, and destination mailbox is 'My Mail'.
2. Create a brand new mailbox 'My Mail 2' and move all messages from 'My Mail' to 'My Mail 2'.
3. Delete old, now empty, mailbox 'My Mail'.
4. Open Filters and update filter A by selecting 'My Mail 2' as new destination mailbox.
5. Save filters (File/Save).
6. Rename 'My Mail 2' back to 'My Mail'. (Confirm prompt to update filters.)

I have downloaded a copy of most versions (since I became a user in April 2023) of the Pandora Mail installer.

I just uploaded them to my website, where you'll find them as an unofficial installer archive at https://asiapac.com.au/misc/pandora-mail-installer-archive-unofficial/

USER BEWARE: There are no guarantees about the content or longevity of this installer archive. I might need to reclaim the website storage (over 800 MB), and neither I nor the website will be around forever (hey, I'm an octogenarian)! It would be better if there was such an installer archive on the official Pandora Mail website, just like the archives on some other software websites.

Tony Austin wrote:I have downloaded a copy of most versions (since I became a user in April 2023) of the Pandora Mail installer.

I just uploaded them to my website, where you'll find them as an unofficial installer archive at https://asiapac.com.au/misc/pandora-mail-installer-archive-unofficial/

USER BEWARE: There are no guarantees about the content or longevity of this installer archive. I might need to reclaim the website storage (over 800 MB), and neither I nor the website will be around forever (hey, I'm an octogenarian)! It would be better if there was such an installer archive on the official Pandora Mail website, just like the archives on some other software websites.

The file names have two formats: a space between pandora and "v", and  an underscore between pandora and "v".

Regards,

Butch

Underscores have been replaced by blanks.