Goodby, Mathworks

I uninstalled Matlab on my laptop today. I love the product itself, but hate the activation mechanism. I had already gone through it when I installed the student version of Matlab on Windows then again when I reinstalled with Linux on my laptop. But for some reason or another my activation was invalid when I recently checked it. Maybe I shifted around a partition or maybe I just sneezed the wrong way.

I couldn't validate old copies of Matlab or install new copies. I went through Mathwork's web interface for managing activations and it didn't help. So I filled out a support ticket to Mathworks to help me resolve this. In the meanwhile, I started working on an alternate way of doing my project. Three days later, an email arrives from Mathworks asking for the MAC addresses of my computers. I never bothered to send that information.

If I wanted to be treated like I was a dishonest thief, I would have borrowed a pirated copy of Matlab from any one of many students who have downloaded one off the net. All I need for this software to do is work - to do useful things for me. Now I don't need it because I already switched to a method that doesn't require Matlab or any solution like it. Even if I do need an application like Matlab again, there are alternatives that don't require me to waste time like this.

So goodbye, Mathworks. It was fun while it lasted.