So we will pay for the upgrade by buying the 1st file correct?
NO.
All files will be free (it's just that it doesn't make sense to make part 1 public while you can't purchase the license that is necessary to actually run the software - which brings me to point two:)
What you pay for is an additional licenses that needs to be written into your CodeMeter stick. We are currently waiting for a critical update for our web shop which will enable us to do just that - automated licenses updates for you.
Technical background info (you can skip this if you're in a hurry):
Each CodeMeter stick can hold up to 1000 different software licenses from up to 300 different software vendors. By default the CM sticks sent out by eSim Games will contain one license for the then current version of SB Pro. So all of you who purchased SB Pro PE already have a license for the versions 2.251 ... 2.483.
Selling upgrades while keeping the same license was impractical. We did this with version 2.460 because we would have been forced to manually reprogram all CM sticks. That would have cost a lot of time and probably would also have caused massive confusion at least among our "non-geek" customers. Therefore the installation files for 2.460 were never available for download, you had to buy a disk (and wait for the shipment).
Clearly not a very clever solution, more of a desperate workaround.
INSTEAD, we will now upgrade our web shop so that you can buy a new software license (the old one will remain intact), and update the license information in your CM stick by simply plugging in the stick, following a web link, and then clicking on a button to initiate the transfer (you will need Java or ActiveX enabled for this).
That way we can offer all installation files in the future for download, we can always issue a new license for new versions, and we won't have to redesign our web shop in the future like we have to do right now. In other words, we can eliminate all stupid wait times for everybody with the ability to download about 1 GByte of installation files.when released will it be an exe to install the other files, or do we need to unzip each of the files first?
Part 1 will be an executable that will unpack all other files from the subsequent archives. You just need to put all downloaded parts into the same (temporary) directory and double-click the EXE file.
If you buy the DVD/CD version, you still get the download version so not to wait?
Yes. In fact, we encourage everybody to download now while the big rush hasn't started (that will probably come as soon as I send out the newsletter officially as soon as the web shop is ready to take your orders.
I have 2 dongles, one on my desktop and one for my laptop, so do i need to buy 2 more license for the upgrade, or one upgrade will work on both. (I don't like swapping my dongles, lol)
Well, in this special case you need to buy two upgrades indeed. I assume that this is rather atypical however.
I need to purchase 3 upgrades as gifts for others, can I put that all on one order, or is it best to make separate orders and have them shipped to the individuals?
On this I'm not totally sure yet. The safe method is to make three separate purchases. I THINK however that it is possible to buy several licenses in one go, and that if you have one stick plugged in, only one license will be taken from the ticket container, so that the ticket remains valid. You would then simply forward the email to someone else and he could follow the link and update his own stick. I need to test that.