But the vast majority of free users who have no choice but to stay put should not be exposed to potential security vulnerabilities in the name of (modest) incremental revenues. Sure, it may be an inducement for some people (me, for example) to purchase a commercial license so as to regain auto-update ability. students, seniors, nonprofit workers, and so on). ![]() To be continued… It’s Irksome, and Potentially InsecureĬ’mon Zoom: this approach is potentially unsafe for lots of users who SHOULD be free (e.g. ![]() That’s probably what I’ll revert to next year, when my renewal comes due. Be sure to keep your sign-in account and password info handy, because you’ll need to sign into the newly installed version after going through this remove/replace operation.īut you can keep using the free version, and stay current, if you follow this simple two-step operation. Two simple one-liner commands are involved: That results in an up-to-date version on your PC. ![]() Then, if you install Zoom again it will grab the latest version. The basic concept is to uninstall the version that’s running. FYI, I use SUMo to tell me when it’s time to update, but because I don’t pay for a license to that software on all my PCs, I’ve figured out how to use Winget to handle that instead. If you don’t mind running a few Winget commands, you can keep the free version and update as you need to. That raises the interesting question: is automatic updating worth US$95 (this year) or US$185 yearly? I’m not convinced. That said, as I suspected - and as you can see in the lead-in graphic above - if you do pay for Zoom, you also get the Check for Updates option back. But it renews automatically at full price one year from today. Right now, the first year is discounted, so my actual out-of-pocket was “only” US$95.88. It’s assessed annually, and costs about US$185 per year. I went ahead and signed up for an individual Zoom license. ![]() So I conducted an experiment… What About Zoom Updates and Payment? That got me to thinking about Zoom updates and payment. I’ve also noticed that Zoom has been asking free users to “upgrade” to the for-a-fee pay version. In the past weeks, I’ve noticed that the free version of Zoom no longer offers the “Check for Updates” option in its menus. Here’s an interesting set of observations.
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