Your Evaluation Period Has Ended

There are no better ways to spend nice weekend morning than programming - I am sure you agree. ;)

So, one Saturday morning I started Visual Studio Community edition, only to be greeted with “Your evaluation period has ended” message. Somehow my license went “stale” even though I have been using Visual Studio 2017 for months now. Easy enough, there is “Check for an updated license” link immediately below. Unfortunately, that button did nothing except informing me that license couldn’t be downloaded.

Actual solution was to log into the Microsoft account. Once credentials have been verified, dialog simply disappeared. My best guess is that inability to log into account has been the cause for this license covfefe.

Although story has a happy ending, it might not been so if I didn’t have Internet. If this happened in the air, my options would be limited to crying and/or sleeping. Or, if I am lucky, paying exorbitant price of airplane WiFi.

I guess logging off and back onto my Microsoft account should become my standard preflight procedure.

But the question in the back of my mind is: Why the heck would you even put this check in development tool you give away for free?