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Raygun · 23rd September 2009

Lots of opinions here - I skipped the last five pages..
When Logic was tied to its dongle protection, I lost it. Someone asked how a person can be that clumpsy? Well, I had it in a zipped pocket of a bag, which I put into a suitcase for my 40 minute car ride, carrying it from one house to the car, then from the car to another house. I lost the dongle and that is just bad luck. What felt like a safe way to transport the dongle was in reality not. The zipper broke during the ride and when I investigated the suitcase, there was a small hole on one of the corners. Appearantly - since I never found the dongle again, despite a desperate search period of at least two weeks - it slipped out through the broken zipper, through my packings and found the little hole in the suitcase and got out through that, during my carrying it to or from the car. I had to buy Logic again and that sucked. Now, that was only Logic and it wasn't a financial disaster on a grand scale but it was about $1200 and that simply sucks.

The timing of this couldn't have been worse either - for various reasons I was in between two different insurance plans and was effectively without insurance for a couple of weeks. If this would have been my iLok... that would have been a total disaster! And obviously you can have real bad luck. I don't think it would be fair to say that I should have prepared this unique situation any better. It's hard to calculate with parameters you can't really imagine.

Dongles aren't a real problem for me - in fact I was just thinking about it as positive thing since I'm about to get a new iMac for my home setup. I will have my real work space, my simple home studio and a portable rig. That's three computers and most licenses only give me authorization for two computers. With a dongle, I can run my software on an unlimited number of hardware. That being said.. a serial number protection with a generous amount of hardware authorizations would be better than an iLok. No dongle is a better idea than to have a dongle. There is nothing positive with the dongle itself, it might only be better than the current alternatives.

23rd September 2009	#311
Raygun Gear maniac Joined: Jul 2006 Posts: 279	Lots of opinions here - I skipped the last five pages.. When Logic was tied to its dongle protection, I lost it. Someone asked how a person can be that clumpsy? Well, I had it in a zipped pocket of a bag, which I put into a suitcase for my 40 minute car ride, carrying it from one house to the car, then from the car to another house. I lost the dongle and that is just bad luck. What felt like a safe way to transport the dongle was in reality not. The zipper broke during the ride and when I investigated the suitcase, there was a small hole on one of the corners. Appearantly - since I never found the dongle again, despite a desperate search period of at least two weeks - it slipped out through the broken zipper, through my packings and found the little hole in the suitcase and got out through that, during my carrying it to or from the car. I had to buy Logic again and that sucked. Now, that was only Logic and it wasn't a financial disaster on a grand scale but it was about $1200 and that simply sucks. The timing of this couldn't have been worse either - for various reasons I was in between two different insurance plans and was effectively without insurance for a couple of weeks. If this would have been my iLok... that would have been a total disaster! And obviously you can have real bad luck. I don't think it would be fair to say that I should have prepared this unique situation any better. It's hard to calculate with parameters you can't really imagine. Dongles aren't a real problem for me - in fact I was just thinking about it as positive thing since I'm about to get a new iMac for my home setup. I will have my real work space, my simple home studio and a portable rig. That's three computers and most licenses only give me authorization for two computers. With a dongle, I can run my software on an unlimited number of hardware. That being said.. a serial number protection with a generous amount of hardware authorizations would be better than an iLok. No dongle is a better idea than to have a dongle. There is nothing positive with the dongle itself, it might only be better than the current alternatives.