Thanks for giving us an opportunity to clear up any confusion.
The trial of the product that you downloaded is a free 30-day trial of the Deluxe Edition of BigOven. The limitations are primarily that it won't allow you to use it past 30 days without purchase, it has some prompts and advertisement graphics to purchase during the trial period, and it won't allow you to build recipe boxes larger than 2,000 recipes during the trial period.
Note that any recipe and/or shopping list data that you may enter in the product fully transfers to the Deluxe Edition when purchased. (In 2005-2007, the Deluxe Edition was packaged and sold at retail as "Inspired Cooking Deluxe". But as we prepare for the new version, this boxed version has sold down its inventory and is no longer in stock at most retailers. You get the latest version of the code from our website www.bigoven.com.)
In response to several user requests we got via email, there is also a less expensive "Starter Edition" of the product for $9.95; this restricts you in a few noteworthy ways. Primarily, you cannot create (or open) new recipe boxes in it; you are limited to one recipe box, "standard". And this recipe box is limited in size to just 1,000 recipes. For more information on the features of the two different versions, see this page: http://www.bigoven.com/compareversions.aspx
The current version of the software is 1.8.977, or version "1.x" as we sometimes shorthand it. We are indeed working on a "2.x" version here in the labs, which has several improvements (over half of which have been suggested on this board), but we have no announcements to make about shipment date, except that it's probably not in the next month or two -- we have a lot of work still to go on it. We will be happy to detail the shipment date and feature set when we go to beta of the product. There will be a modest upgrade fee for those who choose to move up to the new software which will be less than what the full retail price will be for new users.
It's worth noting that one of our competitors frequently claims that their software is the only one to have released a "major upgrade" in several years. We disagree vehemently with that claim. We have shipped many, many major (and minor) improvements competely free of charge to the 1.x version over the life of the product. A summary list (though not a complete one) is here at our changelog: http://www.bigoven.com/changelog.htm.
Further, since the desktop software seamlessly integrates with the website, you may also want to peruse the "Announcements" section of this message board for further free improvements. For instance, last week we shipped a way for mobile cellphone users (e.g., Blackberry or iPhone or Smart phone) to browse the recipe archive, including their "Try Soons" and "Favorites".
Hope this clarifies things a bit further.