The registration fee is 25 euros, by PayPal, at www.ei5di.com. This is the only payment option. You do not need to have a PayPal account - any valid credit card may be used.

When you register you get a key file SD.KEY, by email, corresponding to a single callsign of your choice. The key file is a standard text file with 57 numeric digits, which you can view and print using NotePad.

Your callsign and update expiry date (month and year), for activating new versions of SD, are encrypted in the key. The key file itself will never expire, and any version of SD downloaded before the update expiry date will continue to run indefinitely, without restriction, in the presence of the key file.

It is your responsibility to move SD.KEY to your SD folder, to print it and to keep a backup copy. The only way to get a new or replacement key file is via the normal registration process - lost key files are not replaced for free.

SD operates as normal when used with your registered callsign - allowing for country identifier changes. With no key file, or when used with an unrelated call, SD runs in demo mode, "DEMO" appears in the Score Window and logging is delayed after 30 QSOs - by 30 seconds for each additional QSO. In demo mode, a similar delay is included in all SDCHECK options.

SD is a Windows program operating in text (console) mode. It may look like DOS, but it’s not. It runs on all versions of Windows, but will not run on a DOS PC.

WARNING:
Before using SD, as with any contest logger, you must have a basic understanding of the Windows file system.

In particular, you need to know how to find, copy, rename, view and edit text files, how to attach files to emails, and how to save email attachements to a folder. In effect, you need to be familiar with Windows Explorer (not the same as Internet Explorer), and with NotePad or any other text editor.

If you are not confident with all these tasks, you should not register.

It's useful, too, to know how to use WinZip to unzip the latest country and template files from the website.

IMPORTANT:
When using Windows Explorer to list the files in your SD folder (or any other folder), it is essential to have all file extensions visible.

At times, text editors and word processors add invisible .TXT or .DOC extensions to the key file - everything may look "right" to you, but not to SD.

You can tell whether your computer is showing file extensions by looking for the program file SD.EXE in your SD folder. If the .EXE extension is missing, you need to change a Windows parameter to show all file extensions. Try a Google search with the words show file extensions to find references for your version of Windows. This procedure must be done, otherwise you may not be able to find some of your SD program and data files. This is a Windows issue - not an SD issue.