BTW, there is no actual physical location information available within the operating systems I am familiar with (Win2000 and WinXP), so if EFILive's scheme depends on that, it would only work on newer operating systems (if they have location info in them - and Microsoft's registration process just might do that on Win7). But
a vanilla Win2000 or WinXP install, on a newly wiped partition on a PC that has never been connected to the internet, has no location info available if the person doing the install doesn't manually enter anything. I just checked the EULA on an XP PC, and it's not US-specific. As far as I can determine from any of the OS installers I looked at, they aren't US-specific either.
It's possible that it could be as simple as future versions of EFILive software requiring an internet connection so that the installer could report the IP (and thus, the location), to EFILive's server.
Or, they could also make future versions do that every time they launch, or otherwise go into Demo mode. But since EFILive's GMPX
states:
"...ordering a new V2 from outside of the USA and registering it with EFILive from Paris, France won't magically open things up for you if you are still tuning in the USA" then if they can't pick up location info from the operating system, my guess is the latter of those two is more likely. If that seems like it would be an unrealistic PITA, well, it might be, but these days, many different mainstream packages require an internet connection to install them, as part of the registration process. Some publishers used to provide an alternate way to do it for computers that don't have internet connection, but that's rapidly falling by the wayside.
I guess this begs this question for EFILive: "Will upcoming updated versions of the EFILive Tune Tool software require an internet connection every time the program is launched?"
Even without any workarounds, though...
since all other aspects of tune files except EGR & DPF will be modifiable by US users,
and EFILive's scheme doesn't remove EGR & DPF attributes from the tune files (just blocks US users' access to them),
and since EGR & DPF on/off modification is simple, and that capability will still be available to users in other countries,
and since tune files are small and easily transferred electronically...
When you see other posts saying "read between the lines" those are some of the lines to read between.
BTW, Since EFILive
doesn't particularly like the speculation, if mods or anyone
else thinks maybe this speculation doesn't belong out in the open, just say so...
