I am a student and bought MC 2.8 in June, 16th 2008 in Germany. Two days later MC 3.0 was available. However I was shocked how many people could not give me a simple update information. I called the reseller, the distributor, another distributor, the distributor called a person “who is usually well informed” (no kidding), another reseller. The reseller called the distributor. Nobody seemed to know how an upgrade was available for my case. I called Avid Germany. They did not know. But surprisingly they did not say: I get back to you in a minute with the information. And I was calling Avid personally and was not asking for some special technical information. This seemed very much like “Old thinking” to me. And quickly I was asking myself whether I made the right decision. I am going to be a filmmaker and I am investing time now in learning how to edit. And I am either investing time in Avid MC or FCP. And whenever I visit Apple.com I see yet another idol of mine using Fincal Cut Studio like the Coen brothers or David Fincher while I read that there are still compatibility problems between MC and Pro tools after all these years. (????)

Well. Fortunately I turned to the forums and found some other desperate guy with a question thanking Marianna in his post for her great help. So I turned to her and so much is for sure - she is representing what I understand is supposed to be the Avid “New Thinking” - following through even on a Sunday, getting the answer to my question and solving yet another dongle issue. If Avid decided to have more people like Marianna and Jeff on the payroll I think I made the right decision.
Keep up the good work!! : )

 Marianna is so helpful and so knowledgeable and so dedicated practically 24/7 that I would nominate her for Sainthood.

Larry Rubin:

 Marianna is so helpful and so knowledgeable and so dedicated practically 24/7 that I would nominate her for Sainthood.

As far as i am concerned this is allready the case

Menno

micha2489:

Nobody seemed to know how an upgrade was available for my case.

Your reseller is woefully under-informed, because it's been pointed out several times in this Forum that customers have a 90 day window from time of purchase for free upgrades. So you should have no problem upgrading to 3.0 if you so desire.

that seems to be a more common problem with resellers in germany, at least the ones selling academic / edu versions. fortunately i went straight to the forums after my first "don't know, ask avid yourself" answers, otherwise i'd probably still wait for information about the free update while that window's closing fast.

but the forums are more than compensating for the resellers lack of guidance, and yes: marianna is a saint, but of course she's in good company with blkdog, who's been no less helpfull and straight.

As I wrote I also called Avid Germany ... ; )
And later it was more a question of how to upgrade since I did not know what to fill in for "Company" (*required) as a student on the following page http://www.avid.com/register/30_cpr_form.asp

 I wrote "Private" which is true, and which worked, but that was for the comercial version. Should work for Academic.

Dave

Larry Rubin:

micha2489:

Nobody seemed to know how an upgrade was available for my case.

 

Your reseller is woefully under-informed, because it's been pointed out several times in this Forum that customers have a 90 day window from time of purchase for free upgrades. So you should have no problem upgrading to 3.0 if you so desire.

Really is that true !?!?!  I bought the Xpress Pro => MC Soft 2.8 upgrade around a month ago do I qualify too ? How do I update ?

Thanks!

Yes you do. After you have registered your 2.8 software at avid.com/register, you can go to avid.com/protect (Wait at least 24 hours for your registration to go through) and download the software and dongle updater.

BLKDOG:

Wait at least 24 hours for your registration to go through

... and with "go through" BLKDOG means that your system-id may not be included in the dongle-update-file "versioner.avd" if you download too early; of course you can try before, but there have been quite a number of "my dongle can't be updated!" reports which were solved by simply downloading the file again the next day.