[digitalslr]

You may have a point regarding some plugins, but complaining about it here isn't very fair to Vital:

>additional software, security tools (digital dongles) and drivers

Vital appears to install/require none of these things.

>found the free version to be limited in many subtle ways

Subtle how? It's all listed on their home page: there are less presets (you can make your own) and there are less wavetables (you can import your own). The only functional limitation is on using the "text-to-wavetable" feature to generate wavetables.

Otherwise, you have all the same modulation, filtering, wavetable morphing, & FX that the paid version does. If you choose to pay for it, you're basically just buying more presets.