"Old New" Stock of 3dsMax Design 2009 & licence issues

[rogerbrighton]

Hi all, I've been offered an unopened sealed, boxed copy of 3dsMax Design 2009. The seller has a few of these bought from an architectural design company that has gone down. My question is the obvious one I'm afraid - is this product going to be registerable?

I have heard that Autodesk, when sending out multiple copies of a product to a company, pre-record & register the copies. If so, then this software is probably useless. I'm not able to get a copy of the serial number until I've bought as the seller, quite rightly, says that with the number, I could register an illegal copy which of course I don't want to do as I also want to buy the support subscription and update route.

So - to buy or not? The price is about 1/3rd of retail so represents good value if it's valid. Any suggestions would be very gratefully received!

Cheers,

Roger

[TravisNave]

No, I would avoid this scenario. If the licensed are technically owned by another company, then you will not be able to register or upgrade it unless a transfer ownership of license. Furthermore, if the product was under Subscription at the time and was already auto-fulfilled to 2010 or 2011 then the license is expired anyway. Also, even if the seat is brand-new, the serial number on the box may not be a valid serial until Autodesk records it as being sold. I would purchase software only from a registered reseller. Even at a 1/3 of the price, you are still getting what you pay for... and in this case, I fear it is a rip-off. You will be left with essentially nothing more than a free-trial product because the cost of the software is not the physical media, it's the license itself. So instead of saving 66%, you are paying 33% for something that you can get for free.