That's a bit like 'how long is a piece of string?' unfortunately. The last time I sent an activation email to them, which was for that 700ER at the weekend, I got a reply with an activation code in literally a matter of minutes, but the time before that (about two months ago when reinstalling my 900ER) it took absolutely ages for them to get back to me and I ended up PM'ing Ed at Ariane on the product forum to kick things off. To be fair, once I did that, I got an email pretty quickly, but it had been a very long wait before I indulged in sending that PM.Currently I think they're getting activations out fairly fast. You can usually tell that from the forums (which I'm looking at fairly regularly at the moment, watching for a patch announcement on the 700ER), and there aren't any 'where's my serial number?' posts on there with recent dates on them. That means they're either not selling anything, in which case there wouldn't be any complaints about slow activations LOL, or they are and people are getting activations in an acceptable time. We could be cynical here and choose to believe the former, but since they make the only FSX NG you can get, at the moment I suspect they are selling things.As much as people slag Ariane off, they aren't really as bad as many would have you believe. Their activation is indeed a bit of a pain (I hate email activations), but they aren't really the wicked people that many like to imagine they are. They did used to be like that though when different people were in the organisation, and unfortunately for them, the mud from those days has stuck, so it is partially their own fault, but to be fair, that's a bit like being blamed for the sins of your father. If they would only adopt something like the Flight 1 wrapper system or some such (of which they have no plans to unfortunately), I think people would eventually see that they are not so bad, so they do have themselves to blame a bit in not doing so, because draconian activation systems don't appear to stop much piracy as far as I can tell, but such activation systems are however, really great when it comes to annoying legitimate customers.Al

Good points however besides the activation system the total lack of liveries is not helping them gain respect either...That is just unheard of to be honest. I mean what are they thinking? Somehow their relationship with McPhat got pearshaped and they do absolutely nothing about making liveries available. And I cannot access their forums to ask them about it (as I have not paid for their product yet) to actually help me with my buying decision. That is just a totally horrible business strategy. I wish the other NGX was already out and then this decision would be over in a second.Alex

You don't have to convince me on that one. Although it is up to Ariane Design how they decide to do business with regard to offering paint jobs, I've personally never been a fan of paying for repaints for any FS aircraft, because I happen to think that freeware stuff is one of the things which lubricates the FS community and was a large part of what made Flight Simulator, Avsim and indeed other FS websites a success. Not to mention the notion of repainting stuff, and legal attempts to prevent people from doing so for certain liveries, was one of the things that gained Ariane a less than stellar reputation with many in the first place.Al