OEM Software legit?????

I think it may be legitimate but you need to check with the manufacturer to be sure. With OEM the manufacturer has sold the product for cheaper because either it is supposed to be bundled with something or perhaps they expect support to be provided through that other company. Perhaps there are other reasons for OEM but these are the reasons I have seen for it. Now, if it is supposed to be bundled and you only buy the software then it is likely not legit since it may have been licenced for sale as a package and you are not buying the package. I am also worried about support. I bought OEM computer software and in that case the support was only through the company that sold me the software. This was not very helpful.

I would look over Cakewalk's website and perhaps contact them to confirm whether users with OEM Sonar licences are entitled to the same upgrades, support and fixes as users with full licences.

Nah- this is not legit- you are paying for a digital copy of the installation disk- you are not paying for the license. This is no different than buying a Microsoft media disk (which is common for corporations). You still need a license key to install the software.
I didn't read anywhere where they say they are selling a license for the software.

javaj, on the FAQ they do say that they give you a serial number for license activation. I still question the validity of OEM for the reasons I put in my last post. They also make it clear that you get no upgrades or tech support on this product. Ok....next!

Has cakewalk been bought out by Roland????

It's website says Cakewalk by Roland????

http://www.cakewalk.com/Products/consumer.asp

I've contacted Cakewalk's OEM dept to see if that OEm site is legal.

I'll let you know their response.

Of course it's not legitimate. But then I think you knew that already.

The FAQ's on this website are identical - including the same grammatical errors - to those posted on a number of other 'cheap software' sites, most or all of which are probably run by the same operation and dispersed across numerous hosting services in order to help them evade detection. For example, http://download-cheap-software.getpack.com and http://www.tbm-language.com.

Have you not noticed that no address or proper contact details are provided by the vendor anywhere on this site? No site operating on the right side of the law would leave out that sort of vital information. But that doesn't just help keep the companies who own the copyright on this software and the authorities at bay; it also helps to prevent you, the potential customer, from taking action against these scamsters if they sell you rubbish or don't deliver the goods at all.

Can you really have been in this forum long enough to have posted over 800 times, yet still ask such a daft question?

comradec,

No I wasn't sure which is why I asked.
ty for working out the dodgy contact details. I have alerted Cakewalk but they have not got back to me.

Yes, I guess I'm daft enough to have asked such a question.

I'm now 43 yrs old and can't stay on top of the changes to technology anymore. Fortunately my kids 11,12,15 keep me somewhat in the know but I still seem to lag behind in a lot of areas.

Well, here are a couple of clichés for you:

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

If something looks too good to be true, then it probably is too good to be true.

As for the relationship between Roland and Cakewalk, the former bought a majority stake in the latter about a year ago.

See http://createdigitalmusic.com/2008/01/18/namm-roland-acquires-majority-of-cakewalk-promises-joint-products-in-2008/

The two companies had worked together closely for quite some time before that, though, hence the fact that it's invariably Cakewalk 'LE' software that gets bundled with Roland hardware.

If something looks too good to be true, then it probably is too good to be true.

I'm not sure about this cliche as we lived in England for 5 years and have lived in Australia for the past 14 and I'd have to say that Australia is too good to be true when compared to England. lol

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

Again I'm not sure about this cliche either. I've had numerous free lunches given to me at work.

Linux and open office are free and I have used these successfully on computers.

You might need to update your bank of cliches just like I need to update my knowledge of techno changes.

I have used Cakewalk 7 and 9 for years. Both these products I paid less than $50 for and they even came with a midi/serial cable. I guess prices have gone up but I'm not sure that I can do that much more with Sonar than I can already do.

I sell software outside of the music market, Adobe, Microsoft, VMWare, Symantec, etc. OEM software is usually sold with the product, for example, with XP, Vista or Leopard, the mfr of the product is responsible for support, so if you buy an HP, HP takes care of the Microsoft software questions, Lenovo, Apple for Apple's OS Etc. If you buy the full version of the software in a store, Microsoft gives the support.

Is it ok to buy OEM? That's a real grey area, you will not get support for it, it's not intended to be sold to the general public, if you note on Sonar LE's page in Cakewalk's site, it makes it's sale pitch to the mfr, like Roland, Korg, etc

Like others before me, what is usually too good to be true, usually is. I've had a call where client found MS office Professional selling for $70 each, wanted 200 copies, I told him I couldn't do it for that price. A year later, he calls tells me he needs to get 200 copies of Office Pro quickly, reason? The copies they bought were pirated.

If this company is doing something illegal which they could be doing, heaven help them if Roland's/Cakewalk's Lawyers get ahold of them. If it's a legitimate company (which I doubt), they'd have to be complete morons to pull a stunt like that, get an inquiry like that, will bring other company lawyers knocking at their doors in succession.

But then again, I'm not familiar with the music software business so I could be wrong.

I came to the conclusion it wasn't legit.

I tried Sonar 8 as a demo and wasn't impressed. They've made it too complicated.

I like Sonar LE, it's all I think I need really as I'm a beginner, I'm still trying to make sense of Midi. Fortunately when I'm frustrated I have the Juno-G to go back to and realize I'm not completely stupid.

I'm liking Sonar more and more as I play with it, figuring it out. If you say Sonar 8 is complicated, I believe you.

I am a bit disappointed that in the store, there's really not a lot of DAW's out there for us musicians that to be honest ,just don't have a lot of cash to spend. You can get a few programs for $99, like Steinberg's Sequel, but it's limited, seems proprietary, and installation is very unfriendly. I have Magix Music Maker and not a bad program, a bit rough but it works for about $60, not a fan of the interface though, seems they're trying to push video, I want to make music, not videos.

Then there's a great British mag, CM magazine which comes with a DVD that has free DAW, instruments, loops and for $15 US, not a bad deal at all, DAW is very limited but it works.
So Sonar LE was sitting around for a while, got it with my Juno-G and I decided to install it, and been happy with it so far, very clean and not easy to use but learning.