It's sad that the more generous, user-friendly trial policy led to worse sales. ;-(
it is the unfortunate truth of the world. It's why I just roll my eyes when I see comments like "nagging reminders mean I'll never buy your product!" Those were probably never going to be customers anyway, they're just finding ways to justify it to themselves.
I still have not gotten around to buying WinRaR. On other hand if it stopped working I would probably install something else.