Hello John,
Thank you for your message.
I suppose that can't be changed, for example to display a message saying, "Can't connect to outdated v6 host. Upgrade host to v7 or purchase a paid license." without a new version of the viewer software.
Unfortunately, currently the mechanism that fetches the Host's version works this way that you need to sign in/connect to the remote Host in order for the updated version to display in Viewer - we already plan to improve this mechanism in the future updates.
In addition, we will also add a feature that will allow to run a diagnostics report on the Viewer's side to see what factors might be causing a connectivity issue, including the version mismatch.
Unfortunately, we can't provide any specific ETA on these features yet.
Would it be possible with a free v7 license in a v7 viewer, connecting to a v6 host, to allow Remote Install -> Update Host? IE just allow that one operation. This would seem to ease pain for free users while still encouraging them to upgrade to the latest and greatest and most secure version.
Thank you for your suggestion. Unfortunately, currently this is not possible, however, I will forward this suggestion to our development department for a review, to see if we can implement it or come up with an additional way for free users to upgrade their Hosts.
Please let us know if you have more questions.