I've had several "subscriptions" for PGP Whole Disk Encryption. What I didn't truly understand when I spent my ungodly amount of money on them was that after a year you don't just stop getting "subscription support." If you don't re-up, your hard drives decrypt and the software is crippled. Apparently now they are offering a "perpetual license" for less than I paid for my "subscriptions."

Yeah... how nice. Talk about money down the drain.

I also attempted over a week ago to contact their customer support because I purchased the original licenses through CDW and I no longer use them as a vendor. The only response I received was an automated "someone will contact you within 24 hours." Apparently their 24 hours is much, much longer than mine.

So, I'm now in the process of decrypting several laptops (12 hour process each), then installing TrueCrypt, a free open-source package that provides the same functionality of PGP Desktop, and re-encrypting the drives with the new software.

Now in fairness I'd tried TrueCrypt 5 before I purchased the PGP Desktop software and it had issues with two of the machines I tried it on. TrueCrypt 6 works perfectly across the board. No hiccups, no issues, just beautiful security. Oh, and their support forums are more responsive than the commercial company's paid support department. Go figure.

Another nice tidbit: NOWHERE in the PGP Desktop help or online faq could I find any information about how to decrypt the drive prior to uninstalling the software. They conveniently skip right over that because, hey, why would you not want to be their customer?

Score one for Open Source Software.