I don't want to mislead anyone here, 'continally' means that was the case every time and that was quite a few but it was over some years - certainly not every few weeks or even months.

On the other hand, another program I purchased for several hundred dollars reqired activation but was much easier to deal with. Despite my vow, it was one of those situations where I needed a quick solution so I purchased it fully expecting the same trouble (note, there was no indication on the website about the activation process).

So to avoid any inconvenience through downtime, I inquired what happens in such circumstances and the almost immediate reply was 'there's no problem reactivating it so long as you don't do so too often within a given week'. Note, there was no need to inform the company beforehand.

From my experience, that's definitely the exception to the norm, so not all software companies are unreasonable.