Some shareware applications only give you a short period of time to try an application out before the time expires. A program called RunAsDate can solve that issue by letting you specify a "simulated" date and time to run an application. It’s almost like setting your system clock back, except that your clock is not actually affected by this (meaning the time in the System Tray will still be correct).
This can also be used to see what happens when a trial will expire. To do that you just have to set the date past the expiration of the trial period, and then start the application using RunAsDate.
You can create a shortcut on your computer that will always run a program at a specified date. The syntax for the shortcut would look something like this:
RunAsDate.exe 22/10/2002 12:35:22 "C:/Program Files/Microsoft Office/OFFICE11/OUTLOOK.EXE"
Using this program could probably be considered a time trial crack for shareware programs, but I think there are some reasonable instances where you can use this. One that comes to mind is when a program goes into restricted functionality mode after the trial has expired, and you no longer have access to your data. This would give you some extra time to extract your information.
RunAsDate isn’t going to work with all programs though…it all depends on how the app accesses the current time (they could be remotely accessing the time through the Internet).
RunAsDate Homepage (Download Mirror) - No Installation Necessary
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Tags: Freeware, Software, Applications, Mod
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SWEET! Good find, Ryan!
Wonder How long this app will survive before some shareware manufacturers shut it down.
Well, it’s not really doing anything illegal though, and there are plenty of ways shareware developers can get around this being abused (a.k.a. various ways to read the system’s date).
It’s like P2P: there can be legitimate uses for the tool too. Like, uhm… Uhm…
Well, software developers could use it to see if their program could still function in 2100. Nah. I’m out of ideas.