So first time Memory Maker user here and unfortunately we have the old annual passes where we still have to pay for the MM. Trying to entirely wrap my head around this. So we have photos from Jan 14-18. The 14th are going to expire today. So from what I understand, we have to order/pay for the MM by today and those photos from the 14th of Jan would still be available for download another 30 days from today and so on?
My other question is I was allowed to download some photos from the photopass to my computer and have not paid for MM and none of them have the watermark? Is this a temporary think and that watermark is all of a sudden going to pop back up?
You've got several different issues going here and you're a little confused.
1) PhotoPass photos expire 45 days after they are snapped, unless you pay $20 for a one-time 15-day extension. Memory Maker does not change the expiration date, it only allows you to download your photos. The only way to keep your Jan 14 photos from expiring is to buy the extension; then every photo that is in your account at the time the extension is applied to the account will expire 60 days after they were snapped instead of 45.
2) Memory Maker has a 30-day unlimited download window that starts when you download your first photo. The download window does not affect the expiration date of photos; some photos might expire before the window ends, or the download window might end before all of your photos expire. They're not tied together at all. When you begin downloading photos with a Memory Maker entitlement, you can download any photos in your account an unlimited number of times for 30 days. You can download them one at a time, in bunches, or all at once, over and over, unlimited, until the 30 day window ends. NOTE: If you download more than one photo at a time, they will come in ZIP archive files, which you must unzip to get your photos out of them.
3) When you say you "downloaded" some photos to your computer without Memory Maker, do you mean that you paid for the downloads at $15 each? Or did you simply right-click on some photos and save them?
If you paid the $15 to download a photo, it is full-size and you have complete rights to it, same as a photo downloaded via Memory Maker; it's a plain JPG photos, same as you'd get from your own digital camera, and doesn't have any copy protection built into it.
If you right-clicked on a photo and saved it to your computer, or did a screen capture, or used some other means to get your photos without paying for them, then you don't have the full-size version, all you have is a low-res thumbnail. You're also stealing.