You can order a registration code through the Q-emuLator order web page. Select a type of registration and enter the information necessary to process the payment. Within 72 hours since you submitted your order, you should receive a registration code that you can enter in the program to unlock the features you paid for. (Select 'Register...' in the initial Q-emuLator window, or choose 'Register...' from the 'Q-emuLator' menu.)

Originally Q-emuLator was intended to emulate only the Sinclair QL as it was released in 1984, plus access to floppy disks.
I found, however, that since 1984 a number of QL compatible systems and expansions had been built, with more advanced features like a file system capable of accessing subdirectories, mouse interfaces and drivers, built-in RAM disks, and much more. Users of these systems asked me to add some of these features to Q-emuLator, and the effort it took to enhance the emulator resulted in a higher registration cost than I had originally planned.
However, these features benefit only former users of such QL compatible systems without adding much value for people that owned only an original QL plus maybe a disk interface and a RAM or ROM expansion and that want to run their QL software on an emulator.
For this reason there are now two types of licenses. A cheaper one ($22.50) to emulate an original QL plus some expansions. This allows users to run any QL software that could run on an original QL, giving an experience comparable to running a real QL (similar speed, sound, etc.). Another and slightly more expensive license (recently reduced to $40) is taylored for the advanced user that is still actively using his expanded QL or QDOS compatible system, and needs emulation of a more capable QDOS environment, with more memory and speed and better interoperability with other recent QDOS systems.

The two types of licenses are named "Original QL" and "Expanded QL" registrations:

The "Original QL" registration allows Q-emuLator to run at a speed similar to that of an original QL, and to emulate its hardware (68008 processor, memory, video, keyboard, sound, joystick, 2 serial ports). Plus, Q-emuLator can access QL floppy disks and Windows files, and the "Original QL" registration allows you to run larger programs by emulating a 256KB memory expansion.
Q-emuLator gives you almost perfect compatibility with the original system and can run 99% of all the software and games that a real QL can run.

The "Expanded QL" registration gives you all the features of the "Original QL" registration, but it also allows processor emulation to run incredibly fast compared to the original 68008 and it emulates more hardware found on QL expansion boards (up to 16MB RAM, 4 serial ports, 2 parallel ports, built-in RAM disk driver). The "Expanded QL" registration adds an accelerated QDOS video driver and a "Level 2" QDOS file driver that allows recent QDOS programs to correctly access files and to use subdirectories. You'll be able to access QXL hard disk files, and if you have the Pointer Environment there's a mouse driver to allow you to use your PC mouse in QL PE programs. The "Expanded QL" registration can also partially emulate the hardware of the Gold Card QL expansion card, allowing you to run on it recent Gold Card versions of the SMSQ/E OS.

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Registration gives you free access to any non-major updates, i.e. your registration code will be valid for any future versions of Q-emuLator numbered 2.x.

To transfer your QL software to a PC, you need a working QL with floppy disk drives, otherwise you will be limited to using the few pieces of QL software that are available on Internet.

You are allowed to use an unregistered version of Q-emuLator for up to two weeks before deciding whether to purchase a registration or discontinue using the program.
During this period of time you can run in 'Limited mode' to verify Q-emuLator functionality. The main limitation of 'Limited mode' is that the emulation speed is only about 30% that of a real QL. It's pretty slow, but you can still play with it, transfer files from QDOS floppy disks to Windows and verify that it is compatible with your QL programs. Other limitations are the absence of sound, serial ports and other devices.
If you would rather see the emulator running at maximum speed and with most of its features on, try 'Demo Mode'. The main limitation in this case is that the emulator will only be able to access disks to read a QL demo program supplied with it. If you exit the demo program, you will also be able to try SuperBASIC commands and write small SuperBASIC programs (you won't be able to save them, though). While you can't read from disk, you can use the DIR command to look at contents of Windows directories, QDOS floppy disks, and QXL.WIN files (including listing contents of subdirectories). Sound is enabled in this mode, and you can experiment with the weird BEEP command.
The following table is a summary of the differences between the three evaluation modes and the two registration levels:

Note that most features can be limited or disabled when available: for example, even if you have an "Expanded QL" registration you can still limit the emulation speed to run QL games at the right pace.

The Q-emuLator web site has a page listing some of the QL software that has been tried on Q-emuLator (but the emulator should run all QL software, even if not listed).