Stardock Central has nothing asking you to pay anything per se. If you want things like the enhanced version of the WinCustomize Browser or access to premium suites, you have to pay. QED.

Stardock Central requires you to receive one email from us to activate your Stardock.net account, to somewhat show that "you are you" and not futzing around with a bogus email address. You don't want to provide us with a valid email address for you, then I'm sorry, you shouldn't be a customer.

Of course, it's incorrect to say that there's something from Stardock that requires an email before "each and every action", but I can see that hasn't bothered you so far. Let's continue.

Stardock Central does nothing to remove old skins or anything else (unless they were old skins included with a specific build of something through Stardock Central that later got removed). If they've been "lost" from display, there's some path issue. The skins are still on your drive.

I'm afraid that we've not yet mastered the technology to run programs on remote computers and still display them on yours without taking any RAM. Your PC is no more protected from loading anything and everything whether running Stardock software or not. Your display panel comment makes no sense.

As for why the new SDC rather than the CM, there's lots of reasons. Primarily among them is our desire to be able to allow customers to have a central (get it?) place to access all the various SDS networks, including features to link to the community, options for accessing Stardock resources, as well as allowing updates to be incremental rather than requiring full downloads of everything each time.

$49.95 plus any potential sales tax purchases a 12 month subscription to the Object Desktop Network. What does that mean? It means for 12 months you get access to alpha, beta, and release builds for ODNT components. It means you can archive and restore those builds through the CM or SDC (excepting issues like this weekend's 6 month+ old WB 3.50a issue which we've made available for anybody who's subscription has expired).

I do not understand your "I'm asked to go to a hyperlink in the display properties to download the skins and establish another subscription account" comment. As best I can guess with a lack of information, you've a shareware component (that is part of the Object Desktop Network) installed and as such it is prompting you to register if you continue to use it.

5 1/2 months with an expired account that recognized you only 2 weeks ago? Don't pull that as a justifaction for anything here. There are multiple modes of contact to Stardock which can sort different email addresses, older orders, gifted accounts, whatever.

As for the rest of your long paragraph of comments, you're not being clear on this at all. From what I can see from some account records, you've had an Object Desktop subscription for over 6 months, have been connecting on a regular basis, and have purchased addtional software outside of the ODNT family.

You appear to be a paying customer. Your "the security stuff scares me" comment is so out of bounds considering the problems in the OS you got on your PC/CD that I don't even know where to begin.

And nobody here at Stardock is sitting around pondering ways to wipe existing skins/themes from your PC. Apart, as I've already said, from ones that were included via SDC installs, due to path issues (which doesn't mean they are gone, just not visible to the current settings), or the like.

Email kwilas@stardock.com and we'll see about figuring out exactly what has gone so wonky with you.

Kris

Any of the browser functions in SDC are handled by an embedded IE control. I heard after the anti-trust trial that it was a part of the OS. Security flaws? YES. They are Microsoft's when they are found.

You totally, imho, don't understand what happens with OS components, email, or security. If you hit some whack-ass site where they are trying to screw with you, you're going to get messed up unless Microsoft has fixed the flaws in question.