[mikymike]

Originally Posted by John Eppstein

Well, obviously you're an apologist for the dongle companies.

It's pretty obvious that you never work where your system is exposed to the public, or even to numbers of musicians - things walk off, expecially small things. I'm glad you never lost one or had one stolen - you're lucky.

Concerning Waves - their "upgrade policy" is a sham, considering that they are on a one to two year upgrade cycle, which means that if you but their stuff shortly after it comes out you get no upgrades. And forcing you to upgrade ALL your Waves plugins just because you bought a new one of a newer software generation is unconscionable and dishonest. Should I have to replace all my compressors in my rack simply because I want to add a new piece of hardware? This is especially egregious since Waves has not actually upgraded the actual PROGRAM of many (perhaps most) of their plugins for a long time - the only "upgrade" is the new version of the copy protection!

If I have a non-dongleized program and my laptop gets ripped I can simply re-install. The worst that might happen is that I might have to email a scan of my software package to the company to get a new online registration - but that's not likely as I never use online registration because my DAW is not on the internet - ever - and I keep records of my authorization codes, usually written on the CD with a Sharpie.

Yes, I absolutely did compare dongles to Jim Crow laws. Pro Audio people are the "N-words" of the software market and I, for one, happen to resent it deeply. You should too.

Did you just call me a ni@@#%?